Jumping on the Bed!

The continuing blog on anime, games, movies, computers, college, and life in general

Archive for April, 2008

MacHeist II.5?

MacHeist II.5

Back from the dead, and ready to pound out some posts!

First up, the fine gentlemen at MacHeist have been up to no good again causing a ruckus amongst the indie Mac development community. For those not in the know, MacHeist is a bundle of 12 shareware applications that would normally cost $250 if you were to buy them separately.

This is the 3rd time MacHeist has been available but the other two seemed to be testing the waters to see how the bundle would be received. To help sweeten the deal, 25% of the proceeds go to ten different charities. You can either elect to evenly split your portion of the donation to each of the ten, or one in particular. To give an idea how popular this was last time, here is a quote from the head of Mac Heist:

Here’s the final tally for the charity donations for MacHeist II:

$65,508.74 — Save the Children
$60,451.47 — Prevent Cancer Foundation
$57,695.80 — World Wildlife Fund
$54,731.51 — The Nature Conservancy
$53,096.23 — Save Darfur
$49,157.89 — AIDS Research Alliance
$42,665.13 — Humane Society International
$42,016.53 — Action Against Hunger
$38,217.58 — Alliance for Climate Protection
$36,459.12 — Direct Relief International
—————————————————
$500,000 — total

Okay, so you get $250 of software for $49 and you get to feel good about donating to some wonderful charities, but there’s more! If you purchase the bundle online you can refer other people to check out the deal. If they buy it with your referral code then you earn a point in credit. Those credits can then be exchanged for additional bonus software packages and other prizes. Yeah, it’s a pyramid, but it’s pretty much a win-win-win situation. The developers get their products out and pick up a bunch of new users, you get a great deal of software for pretty cheap, and the charities get a boost in the pocketbook so your karma gets a nice warm fuzzy feeling as well.

So, for all us Mac users out there, here’s what this bundle offers us…

  • Awaken 4 – A handy little alarm clock utility that will wake your mac from it’s sleep to start up a playlist of your own choosing to help wake you up. Sure is better than that shrill alarm sitting next to the bed. And don’t worry, the Apple Remote can be used to snooze the alarm. ~.^
  • Cha-Ching 1.2.2 – A simple slick interface for managing your cash flow. It isn’t a full featured accounting program, but who wants to be bogged down in accruements and asset depreciation? It’s simple, it’s taggable, and when done properly you too can be amazed that you spent over $200 in food for the month your girlfriend visits from Japan!
  • CoverSutra 2 – I really like this one. It adds a bit of a userfriendly glossy front-end to iTunes. To be honest, I’ve never liked iTunes interface. It’s just bland and hard for me to read because it’s so bright. I’ve always tended to darker colour schemes which is one of the reasons I’ve always used Winamp. I like having my album cover pop up on the screen when a new song starts playing, and I Love the system bar search ability! CoverSutra actually makes me not mind using iTunes. In my opinion, this is one of the three gems of this MacHeist bundle.
  • DEVONthink Personal – It’s a mind manager software. I honestly haven’t really used it that much, but if I ever feel like getting organized, I should be all set. ^_^ If anyone has any views on DEVON, leave a comment.
  • iClip – Is a clipboard organizer on steroids. Much like DEVONthink, I haven’t really used it, but I could see where it would be very helpful if you were doing a lot of copying and pasting between say… web pages and blog posts.
  • Overflow 2.5.5 – This is another wonderful little program that is saving me a lot of being annoyed with OS X. It is an application launcher that is very customizable and much like CoverSutra has a very slick and glossy design that makes the kid in me say “Oooh, shiny!” I really like to keep my dock as clean as possible but I have a bunch of programs that I often open up but I don’t want to have to open up the applications folder all the time to dig through it and find what I’m looking for. Yeah, I’m picky, but Overflow fixes all that. Hit up their website for a strangely satisfying demo video.
  • — Half way there! —

  • Wallet 2.7 – is a handy dandy little digital organizer. I wonder how many of the MacHeist users said “Great! I’ve got all of these cool new programs. What the hell am I going to do with all of these serials!?” I also have a feeling that the guys at MacHeist were also finding that a problem. Wallet comes standard with a spot for serial numbers. Handy! As well as customizable categories and you can add your own. It seems to be pretty solid but I’ve only added a few things and haven’t devoted my life to it yet.
  • Writeroom 2.3.7 – Excellence in simplicity. I highly recommend it.
  • Xslimmer 1.5.1 – Why doesn’t Apple have something like this built into OS X? Xslimmer strips away unnecessary application gristle by removing builds that you don’t need. Running a new MacBook Pro 3,1? You don’t need the PowerPC portion of those Universal apps. Gone! Do you need to run DVD Player in Swahili? Probably not. Gone! You can set up how many default languages to keep, and a few other niceties like where to save backups in case the slimmed down app doesn’t like missing it’s chunkier side. I cleaned up 780Mb from a nearly fresh install of Leopard. Another great addition to the MacHeist bundle.
  • — Now for the entertainment side of things, or: Wait, there are games for the Mac!? —

  • Enigmo – Pangea Software offers up the three games for this bundle, first of which is Enigmo. I haven’t played it yet because I’m busy with DDR Hottest Party, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Final Fantasy IV for the DS, Half-life 2, Bookworm Adventures Deluxe, and Okami. But when I’m on a road trip, I’m sure I’ll look into this a little deeper.
  • Bugdom 2 – Looks like a 3D adventure game with bugs. That’s all I got. Sorry. If I want to feel small and walk around crazy acid trip induced environments I’ll go through American McGee’s Alice. Though the younger Mac users may find this more enjoyable than firing at a Jabberwalkie with a blunderbuss. ^_^
  • Nanosaur 2 – Last but not least is another Pangea game. With dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are cool, right? Make a game out of it!
  • Okay so the tail end (pun intended) of the MacHeist bundle is kind of weak unless you have younglings around and want to keep them entertained. All of the other programs should have a happy home in your OS X though. Feel free to check out the main MacHeist site and poke around, and if you’re interested in buying it (or anyone else that might be interested), please use my referral link!


    https://www.macheist.com/buy/referral/100634

    (“Last Angel” Kumi Koda feat. 東方神起 – Kingdom)

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