I participated in MacHeist this year
At MacHeist.com, they have a mission to save the world one software bundle at a time. I never really liked the idea of software bundles - even in Microsoft Office, used by everyone and his grandma, you might never use some of the software included. Even Google bundles some freeware titles together with their own software, and if they say “Make no evil” while doing this, maybe it’s not a bad thing?
I read TUAW blog in my Google Reader every day, and when I first read their article about MacHeist, I was left cold. Well, I even visited the site they linked, and saw a lot of software I would never use or even try. So I forgot about this, until I realized that this year, some apps I would use are bundled. Namely, I was looking at Espresso, new shiny HTML+CSS+everything editor from MacRabbit. The ideology of MacHeist is that some apps (obviously, the most useful from the bundle) are “locked” until certain amount of people have paid for the bundle. I thought: “well, if they gather enough people to unlock Espresso, I would also jump in”. On the last day of selling, guys from TUAW kindly reminded about MacHeist and I realized that required number of buyers was reached indeed!
So, I entered my credit card number and in some minutes, I found an e-mail with license keys in my inbox. Que bueno! I downloaded Espresso, Times (very special RSS reader, that organizes your feeds like a newspaper sheet, hence the name) and The Hit List (I still hope to start Getting Things Done). It seems that I won’t feel a need to try other 11 applications of the bundle (well, maybe Acorn) but even with these three, I am saving some money, as $39 I paid for the full bundle is still less than price of Espresso alone.
But the most rewarding point of my purchase is not even financial saving. I really like the fact of 25% of earned money being sent to charity. Not just abstract charity, but the fund of choice - for example, I chose my money to be forwarded to a Cancer Prevention Fund. And the fact I still paid _something_ for the software, means that I somehow supported some software engineers to keep up their good job.
I will definitely look for the MacHeist4 next year. And I will try to report about my experiences with software from the bundle.