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Is the real MacHeist on the developers?
We have been covering MacHeist here at TUAW because it is a heck of a good deal. A good deal for users, but what about the developers? Gus Mueller, the man behind Flying Meat software, doesn't think that MacHeist is good for developers. Why? He did the math and it turns out that each developer takes home something like $3.67 (if they split the profits evenly between the developer, the charity, and MacHeist themselves). All of this outrage (oh, and there is some adult language in that post) stems from the MacHeist team declaring this week, 'The Week of the Independent Mac Developer.'One must remember that all the devs participating in MacHeist are doing so out of their own free will, and there is that darned charitable part of the whole enterprise (it is hard to criticize someone for donating something to charity). With that said there is the little matter of 'perceived value.' If you give something away, people think it is worth nothing. Charge a little money for it, and suddenly people see the value in it (the classic case here is bottled water).
Macheist now selling the bundle
As many loyal readers have noted this morning, Macheist is offering an application bundle -- that you previously could have gotten discounts for via invitation and "missions" -- now revealed to the public for full-freight purchase. The package includes several famous (and some infamous) indie Mac apps, and is offered at the low price of $49.95. With 25% of the revenues going to charity, and additional applications getting unlocked as the buy-in grows, this deal seems worthwhile. Consider picking up the package as a gift to the Mac switcher in your life.Thanks to everyone who sent this in.
TUAW Podcast #15: The Delicious Cast
Fire up your favorite audio players ladies and gentlemen, for TUAW Podcast #15 is live and ready for consumption. This time around it was Laurie Duncan, Scott McNulty and I, and I'm delighted to say we have dramatically improved our recording setup to give you a much, much better and cleaner listening experience. Leaving iChat + GarageBand in the dust, we opted for Skype and the fantastic Audio Hijack Pro from Rogue Amoeba, and we sound worlds better, if I may say so myself (though to their credit, Apple seems to be the only one who has mastered two-click audio chat recording, complete with separate channels in GarageBand for each participant). Also, Scott and I were both using Blue Snowballs for our mics, and Laurie's is in the mail.Moving right along, we dub this The Delicious Cast because it was more of a chat about this brewing topic of The Delicious Generation, a term borne out of a post Paul Kafasis at Rogue Amoeba wrote concerning recent aspects of the Mac community like macZOT, Disco, My Dream App and MacHeist, as well as their relationship to Mac OS X's seemingly wayward UI and the recent discussion amongst developers at C4. Paul and many others have been philosophizing over what all these things mean for the community and the future of Mac OS X's usability, so the three of us decided to weigh in, podcast style. I just noticed, by the way, that Paul issued a follow-up to his original post, in case you're down for some more reading on the topic.This time around, the podcast weighs in at just over 23MB and 25 minutes. As always, you can grab it via direct link here, our iTunes Store podcast directory or with our dedicated podcast RSS feed. Enjoy, and be sure to drop us some feedback in the comments!
MacHeist registration open to TUAW readers for 24 hours
We started out with 25 MacHeist invites for you TUAW readers, but we were quickly blown away by the sheer landslide of interest (over 800 requests and still counting) in this latest Mac software event from the minds behind My Dream App. Since things simply became too difficult for us to manage, Phillip Ryu and crew cut us some slack and opened their registration doors for TUAW readers - but only for 24 hours. Coincidentally, the first MacHeist mission ends in 24 hours (11:59 PM EST Monday, November 13th), so you'd better start clicking. Just follow this link to a super-secret MacHeist registration page for your TUAW-reading eyes only (ok fine: I blogged it, so it might not be secret anymore, but it still sure is super). We're sorry we couldn't hook everyone up who originally requested an invite, but we hope this open registration makes us even.Now, go forth and complete your missions. That safe isn't going to loot itself!
Update on the TUAW MacHeist invites
By now, the overwhelming numbers of you who signed up for a MacHeist invite have noticed you haven't received them yet. To be entirely honest, we weren't expecting over 800 replies, as our original bounty from the good folk behind MacHeist (and MyDreamApp) was 25 invites, which was promptly raised to 250 and then even 400. Due to the landslide of interest from you in joining the fun, it's taking us more time to figure out how to harvest everything we need to get an invite out to you all. Rest assured, we're working on a solution now, and we'll post it ASAP. Stay tuned.
MacHeist has begun, TUAW has 250 invites to give away
MacHeist, the next software marketing brainchild of Phill Ryu (you might know him from such events as My Dream App), has begun. As you'll remember, it's an invite-only event (though you can try signing up to snag your own), and I have just received the first mission. Due to its top secret nature, my life - or at least my membership - would be in danger if I disclosed any details, but I can tell you that it looks to be an interesting ride so far, filled with unique adventure and great deals on software.What I can offer you instead of details, however, is an invite to join in on the fun. TUAW has managed to snag 50 250 invites so far, and we'll give them to the first commenters on this post who clearly state that they want one. All we need is a name and a legitimate email address, but DO NOT post your address in the comment itself; simply use your intended address in the comment's email field, and we'll get you the invite accordingly (this way you still snag an invite, while the email spam bots don't buddy up with your inbox). Only one invite per commenter, please, and we should be able to send all your invites out by tomorrow morning. Let the MacHeist begin![Update: Comments are pouring in, and while I haven't had time to go through them all just yet, I noticed others who have invites to give away had a good idea that I wanted to highlight: if you'd like to give away your own invites, or if you're interested in someone else's invites, please state that clearly in your comments. In other words: to those posting their own invite giveaways - please give readers some alternate form of contact for you, so we don't end up double bouncing invites to the same person. Also, to readers - if you're going after someone else's invites (after all, we only have 50 for now), please contact them outside of our comment thread so we can keep everything nice and clean. Thanks everyone!][Update 2: We now have a total of 250 invites to give away! Keep those invite requests coming, and please be patient for them as it's going to take us a little longer to get everything sent out to everyone. We originally said all invites will be sent out by tomorrow morning, but give us until tomorrow afternoon or so to handle the extra leg work.]
Who Is Hubert?
Strange things have been afoot in the Mac shareware community over the past few days; manifested by the cute-as-a-button icon you see to the right popping up on multiple different sites. All we know about this cute lil' guy so far is that his name is Hubert.Oh, and he doesn't want us to talk about him.It's probably safe to say that Hubert is the brainchild of Mac Marketing guru Phill Ryu, and developer Austin Sarner of Disco and AppZapper fame is probably involved as well. If I had to hazard a based on what information we have, I'd say Austin is working on a new application, and a fun one at that. Maybe the OS X equivalent of BonziBUDDY? At this point, we can't do much more than speculate, but perhaps you readers will do some digging and find some info that I might have missed. Good luck!UPDATE: Changed the link in the middle of the post because apparently it now links to a porn site. Gotta love the internet. Link now goes to something a little more apropos.
TUAW Exclusive: MacHeist details
From the people who brought you My Dream App comes the next big thing in Mac software. You might have seen other sites talking about MacHeist, but unlike everyone else in our little corner of the internet, we actually know what MacHeist is all about. Here's what we know: The eventual product of the site will be a deeply discounted software bundle only made available to users. I've had a look at the contents of the bundle as they stand so far, and they are, as those crazy kids say "killer dude" Dozens of Mac developers have signed up to participate in MacHeist Throughout the event, users can participate in mysterious "heists" to gain an even deeper discount on the bundle as well as special freebies. The event will be invitation only, at least for the first couple of weeks, with users selected out of those who signed up on the MacHeist or My Dream App sites. This encrypted message has appeared on the MacHeist RSS feed: 3><(||_|$1\/1+`/ \X/@|\|+ +|-|3 1|\|$1[)3 $(00|* @|\|[) @ |-|3@[) $+@|2+? 1|\|q|_|1|23 +|-||20|_|6|-| +|-|3 @|*|*|20|*|21@+3 (|-|@|\||\|3|$. Even with what little info we do have, it sounds like MacHeist will be just as much fun as My Dream App, if not more so, and full of great deals to boot!
