Steff.me

And there we have it! MacHeist is coming to an end, with only heist number six remaining mid-to-late this week. Today the MH team released the final bag of appliation goodness. Since MacHeist began I’ve been sceptical as to whether the whole thing would really work out and if people would take to it; the idea was solid but would (could?) it live up to the hype, basically. The heists were fairly “mish-mash”, some of them being decent enough to feel pretty cool and others just a waste of time. I say a waste of time, it was basically a quick trip to “The Backroom” to pick up the code and there’s the free apps, which I think that partially spoilt the fun but I didn’t have the time to participate in everything and the ambience and sensation just died. As I mentioned before in a previous post, the “Loot” hasn’t been exactly top of the range, nothing has really been of use to me and has just ended up in my folder named Unused Applications. I shouldn’t really complain about free (quote, unquote.. this makes my point more than quotation marks ever could) applications however, I am. The final bundle was not free. The final bundle was good.

The bundle was presented as ten question marked boxes with each one getting filled with an application each hour. This went on from 12am EST (5am my time) until 9am EST, the bundle getting more expensive in total cost every hour on the hour. The bundle itself didn’t and still hasn’t changed in price from it’s $49.00 and if you participated and completed every heist up until now you get the same bundle for just $39.00. The great thing about paying for this was even though I wasn’t swayed to buy this bundle until the last app was revealed (see later..), 25% of each purchased bundle goes to charity - which pushed me into it in all honesty. I’m not one for giving to charity, I wish I did more, I just don’t. This was perfect in my eyes, Mac apps and donations was just a great idea and kudos to the team. Let’s talk apps!

Before I begin I want to make clear that I am in no way linked to MacHeist, I’ve not been paid like MacAppADay has been and whatever I put up here is purely just my own thoughts and opinions and I’m not easily swayed to follow the masses. I intend to say it like it is and give my honest views. Let’s begin.

—

Delicious Library - $40.00 - Website
The number one in catalog applications. Grab your Mac, a webcam and just go crazy scanning the barcodes of all your worldly posessions in to the library and watch as Delicious Library searches online and correctly catalogs all of your books, movies, music and video games.

The way Delicious Library does that is by its amazing Amazon integration whereby it’ll browse via barcodes on the product in question and download images and information on it, storing it in your home library. Fantastic. If you have a built in iSight, there is no reason why you shouldn’t just buy this for fun whether you need it or not. I can’t wait until I get my new iMac so I can start playing with this myself without boring my friends iSight camera. If you don’t have an iSight camera or any other form of webcam, then you can type in via the keyboard the name of the item and Delicious Library will go get your information and images. Not as cool, but at least it works for us non-iSight people.

This application won an Apple Design Award for “Best Mac OS X User Experience” in 2005 and runner-up in an Apple Design Award for “Best Product New to Mac OS X” and rightly so. It’s interface has been one of the favourites I’ve encountered since I bought my PowerBook and even it’s web design is one of my personal favourites (..good flash integration? Who’d have thought it possible..).

Being the first application that was released in the final bundle it started off on a strong foot.

—

FotoMagico - $79.00 - Website
Integrated with both Aperture and iPhoto, FotoMagico allows you to view ahd share your photos in a way they deserve, in spectacular fashion. At a basic level, this application is a piece of slideshow creation software that allows you to show off your photos in more than just the thumbnails that iPhoto gives you. Granted iPhoto gives basic slideshow capabilities with your music playing in the background, but after watching the videos of this application is motion it’s nothing.

Some of the effects (namely zoom.. wow) are really well done and add life and dynamics to your photos and there are twelve of these in all. You can incorporate multiple songs into these presentations and even insert titles and subtitles to guide the audience. Another pretty cool thing is that you can use the Apple Remote with this application to control your presentations. If you need to pause, the music and visuals will gracefully fade out and resume when ready again.

FotoMagico also allows you to use this functionality with DVD’s or your own personal webpages; sharing is not a problem.

—

ShapeShifter - $20.00 - Website
This application really is a revolutionary way to change your Mac. You can completely customize your entire look and feel with “themes” that don’t just change the desktop background and a few icons - they change everything. Your apps, buttons, windows, menus are completely customized and changed.

If you’re not content with Aqua Graphite or Blue, this application can be a thing of beauty. It let’s you change anything and everything abour your Mac and have it your way.

This is just one of those apps that doesn’t appeal to me. I’m all about look and feel but if I change something from the standard then it better look a whole lot better. Anything that changes needs to look perfect straight away. If it doesn’t and I change it back, it never looks right and so I get unhappy with everything and can never settle. I’m called obsessive compulsive by my girlfriend and a perfectionist by a lot of people and because of that, I believe, this app just doesn’t do anything for me. With all that said, I can still appreciate just how wonderful and impressive ShapeShifter actually is.

—

DEVONthink Personal - $39.95 - Website
This day in age, everything is digital. We are constantly flooded with Word documents, PDF’s, emails, images and more. DEVONthink provides the perfect way to store and organize all of the clutter to keep you on track, helping you to find what you need when you need it.

DEVONthink is, when it comes down to it, a database for all of your documents. Because DEVONthink keeps your important data in one database, it doesn’t matter where the data is physically located; keep information on your hard drive or pull it from the web. DEVONthink uniquely integrates both local documents and live content from the Internet to keep all project-related information together in one place.

DEVONthink is not just a simple database, based on a powerful artificial intelligence (AI) architecture that helps you organize and navigate your information collection quickly and accurately. It assists you with both filing documents and with finding similar items, and can help you make connections that you might have missed on your own. It can even master huge data collections with a few simple clicks, saving you time and aggravation.

I don’t really know much about the application personally, as I haven’t really used it. As this is so, I will refrain from making any particular comments on ease of use and the design of the interface. For more information, I’d suggest checking out their website as provided above.

—

Disco - $14.95 - Website
The simple burning app that goes about poaching users from Toast and showing them how it should be done (I wanted to add in things like ‘I bet the developers of Toast have egg on their faces now’ and some form of sausage or bacon reference, but I can’t come up with anything so I’m dropping the brunch/full-English breakfast references right now). Disco made a name for itself early on with a lot of hype from macZOT and its own personal blog. People bought into this application only knowing it’s name and nothing else about it.

Disco, for some, removes the boring task that used to be burning. Whether you’re creating a disk image, burning a CD or DVD, Disco will only give you the options to do things when they are relevant. This creates a much simpler and easy task flow that’s just much more enjoyable than a regular burning application. For others the UI is attractive enough for them to look at while using the application and it certainly does create a unique visual experience. There’s two words I’d like to use to sum up this application, “simple” and “stylish”.

Other features include something known as Spandex, which allows spanning across multiple CD/DVD’s, Discography, which keeps track of your burning history and of course Smoke. Yes, it smokes as it burns. You can even customize the smoke, with various colours and so forth and even control it with the use of a microphone.

However, this seemed to be the most controversial application (in interface terms) to appear recently. With it’s transparency effect black windows and non-Aqua look and this application is completely different to the ones I’m used to. Sporting it’s own close and minimize buttons that light-up independently from one another and don’t follow the general look and feel of other applications, it’s something you just have to get used to. I’m actually disappointed with the developers with their choice to included a way of turning off the transparency, as I feel it was a unique look that they should have stuck to. It did seem to cause some fuss over the whole “Delicious Generation” thing (I will not go into it now but do check out My Dream App and other places for more information on that).

—

RapidWeaver - $39.95 - Website
I can safely say that RapidWeaver is an easy to use website building application that gives everyone the ability to create and publish professional looking websites simply. This powerful tool makes the job so simple by giving the user a “What You See Is What You Get” interface, with no complex knowledge of html required, all you have to do is simply drag and drop whatever you require on to the webpage. Now all you have to do to create your website is type in the content and select a theme and you’re done - it’s that easy!

The themes that come with RapidWeaver are professionally designed and are over thirty in total. You can even mix and match various themes to get the style that you want. Your style, your way. If you find that this isn’t enough, you can even purchase more via the Blog Theme Pack or Business Theme Pack they have available (at $24.95 each).

RapidWeaver has built in support for blogs, which I have just played with, making the task so much easier. You can easily add audio content to your blog by dragging and dropping an audio file to your blog, RapidWeaver will add this to your blog’s RSS feed. You can even create Flash slideshows, by selecting the photos you want you can turn them in to a beautiful presentation by just letting RapidWeaver do the work for you.

Sharing your creation is just as simple as it’s creation, if not more so. In fact, it’s as simple as pressing one little button, ‘Publish’. At the touch of this button, your website will be available to everyone as it uploads to .Mac, FTP or SFTP.

I’ve never thought I’d use a drag’n'drop style website builder but I’m definitely tempted to give this a whirl and see what I can do. A friend of mine has said the same, so this clearly has enough capability to draw in even those that know some basic HTML and CSS. It definitely seems like a great, powerful utility to have.

—

iClip 4 - $29.95 - Website
“Copy and Paste 2.0″, apparently. iClip is an application that expands the use of the simple functions of copy and paste. It achieves this by creating multiple clipboards, allowing you to copy many things without having to paste them straight away. Now you can browse through a website (or whatever…) copying paragraphs, words and images and paste them all or just some of them into, say, a document. You can copy all day and not paste a thing and not lose anything due to the way iClip’s storage bin works.

It’s a great thing to be able to copy something and instantly copy something else with the knowledge that your previous copy hasn’t be overwritten or destroyed.

This application is currently not available for download, it should be noted. I’m sure I already have a license for this file lying around somewhere, possibly a free upgrade from the current version of iClip that’s available. This application has been in the works for some time now, however it does look pretty cool.

—

Pangea Game - avg. $25.00 - Website
When you purchase the bundle you’ll be able to select one of the great games from Pangea Software, who create games exclusively for the Mac. The titles of the games include the following…

Pangea Arcade
Pangea Arcade is actually a collection of three exciting games: “Nucleus”, “Warheads”, and “Firefall”, all of which are based on classic arcade themes. In Nucleus, you pilot a spaceship around an asteroid field, staying alive for as long as you can. Warheads has you defending a base against incoming missiles, shooting them down before they destroy your buildings. And in Firefall, you must destroy a rapidly descending alien creature with gameplay similar to the arcade classic, “Centipede”. Pangea Arcade is a completely modernized take on several arcade classics, loaded with visual eye candy.

Enigmo 2
Enigmo 2 is a 3D puzzle game where you construct mechanisms to direct lasers, plasma, and water to toggle switches, deactivate force-fields, and eventually get them to their final destination. Enigmo 2 takes this concept to a whole new dimension with much more complex environments and all-new devices.

In addition to the 50 levels that come with Enigmo, there is also a built-in level editor which allows you to create your own games. Share your creations with friends or post them on the web for the world to play.

Nanosaur 2: Hatchling
Nanosaur 2 is a continuation of the original Nanosaur storyline. But this time, you get to fly a pteradactyl loaded with hi-tech weaponry. Nanosaur 2 features an extensive single player “Adventure Mode”, where players fly through the map collecting and saving dinosaur eggs of each species, meanwhile avoiding hostile indigenous life. In addition, Nanosaur 2 includes six two-player levels, including racing, capture-the-flag, and battle.

Bugdom 2
While on his way to visit his family on the far side of the Bugdom, a Bully Bee swoops down and steals Skip’s knapsack. Your job as Skip is to track down the Bully Bee and get your knapsack back. The chase runs through a variety of levels, including a picnic under attack by ants, drainage pipes that Skip must surf through, a gigantic human house, and more.

You’ll be making new friends who will help you through each area. Keep an eye out for Sam the Snail, who will usually make you prove your worthiness before he will help you, and Sally the Chipmunk, who is just interested in gathering acorns, so be sure to brings lots of those to her. Bugdom 2 is a 3D action-adventure game suitable for all ages.

As you can tell the information above is from the MacHeist website (all credit goes to MacHeist for that, copyright and whatnot…) as I haven’t played all of these games, so I don’t feel right judging or giving my opinion on them. They all look great and the ones I have played with, Pangea Arcade, suit my style of game completely. I love the retro look but with new twists, it keeps the style alive. They all seem pretty cool, so it was a hard decision to make. For me it was between Enigmo 2 and Pangea Arcade, but in the end the complete retro package won. Pangea Arcade will be mine (licenses pending)!

—

And that’s it. You get all those apps for just $49.00 as soon as you press the “Purchase” button. I’d suggest going there now and buying it as there’s (at the time of writing) only five days remaining before this great offer is removed.

But there is just one more thing…

Okay, I can’t quite pull that off as well but there is more! If the money raised for charity reaches over a certain amount, two more applications will be unlocked. Despite the fact I really want the final application and it did really persuade me to buy the bundle, I’m all in favour of this idea. Whoever came up with the idea of the charity donation deserves a big congratulations and thanks because this is just fantastic. This way, charities make their money and we get cool applications. Let’s see what our donations can get us…

This application is locked until $50,000 is raised for the charities.
NewsFire - $18.99 - Website
NewsFire is an RSS aggregator for the Mac. For those who don’t know RSS or Really Simple Syndication is a technology for sharing information on the web. Top news sites such as BBC News, Yahoo! and (my personal favourite…) digg publish RSS “feeds” that you can subscribe to and view for information.

This application allows you to forego the mundane task of going to all of these different sites and looking at the feeds, instead all of the sites you subscribe to will have their news items appear in its UI. The great thing about it is that these sites will feature in a dynamic sidebar, which organizes them so that the ones with the most new, unread items appear at the top. It has a simple yet attractive UI, which is always a plus. NewsFire also allows for fast searching through these articles and along with smart feeds, this becomes a necessity for any RSS news reader.

—

This application is locked until $100,000 is raised for the charities.
TextMate - $49.00 - Website
When I saw this application finally being announced, my jaw dropped. Only a couple of days ago was I tempted to buy this application as I have tried the evaluation period for the full time and loved every minute. There is nothing not to like about this development tool. The best thing, for me, is that the price of this application was the same price as the entire bundle. This final application persuaded me that I need to buy it. Being a heister and completing all of the missions also dropped the bundle price to $39.00, so that even makes this a discounted purchase even if I just used TextMate. For me there was no reason not to buy the bundle at this point.

TextMate is a development tool, as I said, that won an Apple Design Award for “Best Mac OS X Developer Tool” in 2006. It’s interface is very clean and fresh, which is pleasing as some editors can just getting irritating when you use them for hours of coding at a time. TextMate is proudly a Mac exclusive application, despite numerous requests for ports to Windows and Linux.

TextMate is not an IDE but by using its powerful snippets, macros, and unique scoping system, it can often provide features that even a language specific IDE lacks. It sports a number of innovative features (too many to list here), that tip the scales to make this the number one developer tool. For a full list of the feature set, check out the TextMate website.

In addition, a rapidly growing community have created modes for more than a hundred different “modes” including support for all major programming languages, writing prose in structured formats such as LaTeX, Markdown, Textile, etc., blogging, running SQL queries, writing screen plays, doing your budget, and much much more (information on these modes thanks to MacHeist).

The license you receive for TextMate allows you updates of all version 1.x, however not version 2. MacroMates are offering a huge discount (of at least 60%) when upgrading to the Leopard-only version 2, though.

—

So there we go! These are some of the finest applications you can find all nicely bundled up for just $49.00. If you haven’t already purchased the MacHeist bundle, I really do suggest you do it now. The total cost of all these applications when bought seperately comes to $288.75 if you don’t include the two locked apps and $356.74 if you do, so you really do make a massive saving. Remember, of the $49.00, 25% will go to your selected charity/charities.

Head over to MacHeist now and see the list of charities available to donate to and then buy the bundle. Remember, NewsFire and TextMate only get unlocked when the money raised for charity reaches $50,000 and $100,000 respectively.

I hope that this little report has helped in some way and, as ever, feel free to leave your thoughts and comments on the bundle or anything to do with MacHeist.