MacHeist

There's some argument about the MacHeist bundle. Whether it's good business and whether it's ethical for us consumers to avail ourselves of a bargain.

I think that validity of the business aspect is for the developers to decide. If participating gets the developer a big pile of cash they wouldn't normally get, it gets them a whole lot of exposure that would otherwise be difficult to get (other than with expensive advertising), and it's not going to cause a support nightmare, then where's the problem ?

Marco Arment may think that it’s not a good idea, as conscientious consumers, to accept such steep discounts on the products that we use and love, but while I don't disagree in principle, I think the argument is a red herring. Without MacHeist, an awful lot of people would not pay for or use this software. With MacHeist, an awful lot of people will pay for this software, may install some or all of it, and may even use it occasionally.

I'm a MacHeist customer. The ethical validity hadn't crossed my mind until today. Having thought about it a little, I think I actually paid over the odds for the bundle considering the actual use I'm going to get from it. There's an outside chance that I'll use one of the apps more than twice. An app may become part of my arsenal. If it does, then it's a dead cert that I'll pay the full upgrade price for the next major release. I get some cheap useful software now, and the developer gets a customer for life.

Having this stuff needlessly installed contravenes a number of al3xs rules for computing happiness. I don't care. There are 133 items in my Applications folder. That's way too many. I don't care. I think Apple make great stuff. I think developers on OS-X make great stuff. I don't want Comic Life Magiq on my Mac because I'm into writing comics. I want it there so that when someone says, "Wouldn't it be cool if we could make a comic of that", I can show them how easy it is with great software. I become a cheap and willing salesman for Plasq (and for Apple).


Don't think of MacHeist as exploitatively cheap software, think of it as a quite expensive demo suite.