MacHeist’s nanoBundle 2 was released last week. Over the weekend I checked it out and decided to ante up the $20 bucks for 5-7 Mac applications. Those apps being:
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MacJournal, writing
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RipIt, DVD ripping
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Clips, clipboard management
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Flow, file transfer
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CoverScout, MP3 art and metadata cleanup
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Tales of Monkey Island, game (after 30K purchases)
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RapidWeaver, HTML authoring (after 50K purchases)
I was mostly interested in CoverScout as a replacement for TuneUp and possibly Clips. Boy was I disappointed.
CoverScout’s publisher requires that you establish a login with them before you can register the program, even if you already have a license code. Their installer forces you to install in the system Applications directory as opposed to a user’s home version. Finally, they also install another program SoundGenie, without any disclosure, or at least I missed the notice. Bad form all the way around.
Clips looked promising, until I went to the developer site looking for documentation or at least a user’s quick start guide. The main site pointed to a wiki. Said wiki only had documentation for another of their products. Not being too inclined to goof around and figure out how Clips works, I started looking at the clipboard facilities in LaunchBar. Clips may not get a second look.
MacHeist also had a little tweet promotion, where you get 3 apps if you tweet about your MacHeist purchase. So I went for it and got access to:
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Airburst Extreme, game
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Burning Monkey Solitaire, game
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Tracks, menubar iTunes controller
I had a trial version of Burning Monkey Solitaire, so at least I’ve got a license for that. I like Synergy so I probably don’t need Tracks, and I’m not a big gamer so Airburst Extreme may never get booted up.
Duly irritated, I went back and checked out what I got for the last MacHesit bundle. Of those 10 applications, I only use one, Acorn, and that only occasionally. At least I thought enough of it to pay Flying Meat directly for an upgrade.
This is making me rethink my position on Mac OS software bundles in general, and MacHeist in particular, although I do like the look of theMacSale. Still seeking a replacement for Google Desktop.