The short answer: Because I don’t refer people to things that I don’t think are worthwhile.

Yes, I have liked some of the things that MacHeist has done before, but this seems stupid. As if they didn’t have enough to play around with from their December 2006 and January 2008 bundles, they’ve now decided that they have to throw another bundle out the window once again. I mean, how many times do they expect us to throw $49 away? I know that these are large savings on totally random I-never-even-intended-to-purchase-this-otherwise selections of shareware, but it’s not like money grows on trees.

But now, apparently, they’ve decided to step up a notch and sell this as a retail package, but not before offering the same thing for sale online first. While I personally think that one defeats the purpose of the other, who am I to think things through logically?

But what’s crazy about this bundle is that NOTHING IS NEW. A few of the applications are from the original December 2006 bundle, but the majority of these are from the January 2008 bundle that was less than three months ago. I mean, who do they think they are kidding?

Well, they’re not entirely insane, in that they’re admitting this themselves. In an e-mail that they sent out to all of us longtime MacHeist members (I’ve been there since the beginning thanks to an invite that Larry sent me back in October 2006), they acknowledged this glaring fact:

“As an already registered member, we know you may own a lot of these apps, so in an effort to keep you interested, and involved in the world of Mac software, we’ve been hard at work putting together a truly awesome referral program. It’s time to call up those old friends… because this time around, we will be unveiling multiple tiers of software prizes, each crammed with several options.”

Well first of all, for the first part of that sentence, let’s correct “own a lot of these apps” by indicating that I own all of them courtesy of these geniuses. And so what they’ve decided to do is instead turn all of us into pawns in order to annoy our friends and family and website visitors to urge them to spend $50 on software that most of them don’t need, and on stuff that the majority of the concerned internet already has anyway. I seem to recall the January bundle having sold tens of thousands of copies, enough to raise $500,000 for charities in that go-around. So what makes this bundle worth it? No, they want to make us pawns to try to urge people not only to buy this software, but to use our referral links rather than someone else’s.

Well, I’m not going to play that game. I’m not going to try to refer people to something just for the sake of getting benefited for the referral, and I’m certainly not going to try to refer people to something that I think is completely pointless myself. That’s not the way I roll. I don’t know where MacHeist thinks they’re getting this idea from, but I don’t expect to see them getting anywhere close the the amount of participation that they’ve had in their last two bundles, because I think most people (except the people greedy for those referral apps) recognize that this is a pretty lame offering. Therefore, I’m not going to post a referral link for you to go get the bundle–consider this a “deferral” for the bundle. And if you decide that you still want to purchase it, go find someone else’s referral link and use theirs.

P.S.: I do think that MacHeist’s little “trailer” for the retail bundle is pretty cool though, kudos to them on that.

Tags: bundle, MacHeist, referral, retail, sale, shareware, Software, stupid

I’ve always been a big fan of NewsFire as my feed reader for Mac OS X. I really don’t know why so many Mac users (particularly those who publish the Mac sites) have such an uncritical, undying love for NetNewsWire, but personally, I think that NetNewsWire is big and clunky. Now, yes, granted, it has gotten better since its version 2 days, but I still think that there’s just too much stuff there. RSS news feeds are supposed to be simple. What good is a complicated feed reader for something that’s supposed to be simple?

That’s why I’ve been a big fan of NewsFire, because it’s very simple and beautiful. It may not have the “power RSS” features (I didn’t know RSS had “power”) that NetNewsWire has, but it delivers a very comprehensive set of RSS readability in a very simple, very beautiful, Mac OS X-like environment that I highly prefer over NetNewsWire. It’s actually an interface that I could imagine Apple designing.

Yesterday, NewsFire was updated to version 1.5, which includes some additional refinements, particularly to make it much more Leopard-like, and today it was announced that NewsFire itself is now free for download and use! So, if you haven’t checked out NewsFire yet, I highly recommend that you give it a try.

Tags: feeds, free, Mac, NetNewsWire, NewsFire, reader, RSS, Software

Well, MacHeist has just sweetened their 2008 bundle for the last time. They’re trying to get $300,000 raised for charity through bundle sales within the next three days. I must say, over the last two weeks their bundle has certainly improved in its impressiveness factor, and so I’m probably planning to buy it and do my part.

However, there are three applications in the bundle which I will not be taking advantage of. I already have a license for 1Password, which is an awesome password managing tool for Mac OS X. I know that a lot of people really like Snapz Pro X, but personally I’ve never figured it out, and I have a license for iShowU, another app which does the same thing. And as for Wingnuts 2, I’m not particularly planning to play that kind of game. (However I’ll be keeping my hands on the mini golf game because it seems interesting, and even if I don’t like it, I’m sure my younger brother would.)

But anyway, I will be giving away a license each to 1Password, Snapz Pro X, and Wingnuts 2 from the bundle. MacHeist allows me to specially designate these licenses to you when I do the check out for the bundle, so these will be licenses especially for you with your name on them. If you weren’t planning to get yourself the full MacHeist bundle but are interested in one (or more) of these three apps, this is a great opportunity to get them free!

How does it work? Post a comment to this post on Webmacster87.info telling me which app(s) you would be interested in getting for free and why you want it/them. The deadline to make your comment is 7:00 AM Eastern time (4:00 AM Pacific time) on Tuesday morning, January 22nd–this essentially gives you 38 hours. I will announce the selected winners Tuesday morning, and will purchase the bundle Tuesday afternoon (the licenses for these three apps will go out to the winners at that time, and the licenses for the remaining 11 apps will come to me for my own personal use). Please be sure that when you post your comment you enter your Name and E-mail Address exactly as you want it to appear in the license for the app(s) you’re interested in. If no one is interested in a particular app, then I’ll just keep the license and file it away somewhere.

Also, do you plan to purchase the MacHeist Bundle, but haven’t yet? PLEASE use this referral link to buy the bundle! I really really would like to get a free license for LaunchBar, and if you buy the bundle through that referral link, I get LaunchBar for free! (If you use my referral link to give me LaunchBar before Tuesday afternoon, I’m willing to use your referral link as well to return the favor.)

Again, thanks to MacHeist for putting on such a great event, and doing it for a good cause. And, thanks to all the developers who are throwing their apps into the ring for this excellent cause as well!

Tags: 1Password, applications, bundle, contest, LaunchBar, licenses, MacHeist, referral, Software

In yesterday’s Leopard Feature Presentation, I did my best to review Dashboard, even though it’s one of those features that I haven’t really taken part of. However, Leopard introduces another thing for Dashboard, but this new feature is aimed towards developers. It’s called Dashcode, and it’s an integrated development environment specifically for Dashboard widgets. Although it’s great for anyone who knows all of the JavaScript necessary for making a custom widget, it’s also advertised as being easy enough for anyone to make a widget without writing any lines of code. Yesterday, right after I finished my Leopard Feature Presentation on Dashboard, I opened up Dashcode to give it a whirl. Let’s take a look at how it went.
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Tags: application, Dashboard, Dashcode, development, Leopard Feature Presentation, Mac OS X Leopard, Macworld, review, Software, widgets, XCode

SubEthaEdit by TheCodingMonkeys has to be my favorite text editor on the Mac (which is one reason why I love Coda, because it has the Subetha Engine built right in). Not only is it a very nice, bloat-free text editor with powerful capabilities for syntax highlighting, etc., SubEthaEdit is the first and the best tool for multi-user document collaboration. Yep, even before Google Documents existed, SubEthaEdit was there. Although with Leopard coming out, which now has screen sharing capability built-into iChat, the specialness of an application like SEE may seem diminished, but it’s still going to be a great tool for those Mac users who don’t upgrade to Leopard right away.

SubEthaEdit 3.0 was released today, and it brings along some nice new features. Although the new version is completely compatible with Tiger, it also packs a number of Leopard features, including being fully Quick Look-compatible, making it possible to view SubEthaEdit documents in Finder Cover Flow, Quick Look, and share them in iChat Theater (albeit read-only). SEE 3.0 can also save files in a special “SubEthaEdit Text” format which retains data such as changes by different collaborators and who collaborated on what, etc. It also has a better view for tracking one’s connections, and a statistics window to view various stats on who has contributed what, etc.

They have a movie detailing all the new features in SubEthaEdit 3.0, although it’s a little hard to understand the guy, it’s still an interesting watch. My congrats to the TheCodingMonkeys and hats off for designing such excellent software.

Tags: application, collaboration, Connections, editing, Mac OS X Leopard, sharing, Software, SubEthaEdit, text, TheCodingMonkeys

I’ve always said that I’m not a fan of computer games. Well, that’s kind of a half-truth, although I am against the majority of the computer games out there. However, I’m a little more favorable towards some of the games out there that help you unwind and actually take advantage of that big glob in your head called your brain. I’ve already reviewed one or two of these this past month, and today will throw out one more.

I may not be a big fan of Windows, but I do know that it comes with a pretty nice Solitaire game built-in. Chess was all that Apple seemed to be able to muster up for Mac OS X, which is why before I went to Los Angeles this past weekend, I decided to see if I could Google up a good and free solitaire application for Mac OS X. My result was a nifty little app called Solitaire XL.

Solitaire XL is the same Klondike game you’re used to on Windows and many other Solitaire applications, and it doesn’t come with any other solitaire games to play. Still, it’s a pretty nice game to play. It has some nice 3D OpenGL-based effects during game play, and the way those cards flip really gives a nice, real feeling to the game. The application itself only has one brushed metal window which is where the deck/discard pile sits–the rest of the cards float above whatever is behind it. However, the window is the way that you can reposition the game on the screen, and if Solitaire XL is not your foremost application, the rest of the game will hide itself until you bring Solitaire XL to the front again.

However, Solitaire XL does have some available options, such as allowing you to choose between two animation styles (it calls them “Stretch” and “Cut”), change the backside design of the card, set a background to the game if you want, set the animation speed, and even turn on a variation of the game that only turns over one card in the discard pile, instead of the traditional three.

Solitaire XL also can keep score of the game. I didn’t know there was any kind of “score” for Klondike, but the way Solitaire XL keeps score is it adds nine points any time you add a card to the set of suits up at the top (anyone know a name for those stacks?), and subtracts one point each time you draw from the deck. It can then send your scores to its online high-score database, although it has had some difficulty loading properly for me. The only slight detraction from the app is the small unobtrusive ad that pops up when you quit the game, but again, this is freeware.

All in all, if you’re looking for a decent Klondike Solitaire game for Mac OS X, Solitaire XL is a pretty good OS X adaptation of the classic card game available for download at no cost. Now if only someone could figure out a way to help me win it more often.

Final Rating:

Tags: games, Klondike, Mac, review, Software, solitaire

Something that a number of Mac bloggers have been doing recently is sharing what they have up in their menubars, and so I thought that I might as well share mine as well. So, without further ado, here is mine:

From left to right (I’ve linked to reviews where applicable):
CoverSutra - Really nice iTunes controller that I love.
Quicksilver - Without a doubt, the swiss army knife of Mac OS X.
Skitch - One heck of an application for snapping, annotating, and sharing images.
iClip - That nice thing for keeping a clipboard history.
Twitterrific - The driving force behind my addiction to Twitter.
Wakoopa Tracker - Sitting there, quietly monitoring what apps I’m using.
TextExpander - If I forget a snippet or want to quickly add a new one, the menu item is there to help me.
International - Quick access to the Special Characters palette.
AirPort - Because I’ve got to know when I can go wireless.
Clock - The small version because it’s good enough, saves menu bar space, and because I wear a watch all the time anyway.
Battery - How much juice do I have? Am I getting thirsty?
Spotlight - It’s slow and I really don’t use it. I know there’s a way to scrap it, I’ve done it before, but I’m just too lazy to mess around with my precious system in that way.

I realize that my blog has been slumping–apparently I haven’t done a non-review article in a week! I’ll be catching up soon, I hope…

Tags: Mac, menubar, Personal, services, Software

One of the most overblown software/hardware categories these days are iTunes controllers: there’s thousands of them. I’ve already reviewed my favorite, but thought that I’d give mention to another one that I’ve tried.

Like I said, there’s a whole bunch of iTunes controllers out there, but one of the founding members of the iTunes Controller category was Synergy, which puts three little controls in your menubar for controlling iTunes, and also includes a number of other nice and interesting features. The downside to it though: it costs money. However, there’s another app out there which is fairly similar, called ByteController.

ByteController is actually fairly similar to Synergy: its main function, like Synergy, is to put the same previous/play-pause/next buttons into the menubar. It’s also skinnable, and comes with a number of skins which you can choose from to determine how the buttons appear in the menubar. Another Synergy feature here, it also lets you set hotkeys for controlling your iTunes from your keyboard, and ByteController includes Growl support. But what it doesn’t borrow from Synergy is its price tag: ByteController is 100% freeware.

All-in-all, ByteController works as advertised and pretty well, although I wish that it had an option to disable Growl notifications, as I’ve already got a few other things that gives me Growl notifications for my music. I ended up ditching it when I got the more powerful (but more costly) CoverSutra, but for someone looking for a free, simple way to control their iTunes experience from afar, ByteController is a very economical way to go.

Final Rating:

Tags: iTunes, Mac, menubar, music, review, Software, Synergy

Despite Apple trying to catch up to modern times with their fabled .Mac Web Gallery, there’s already a leader in sharing photos with friends on the internet–and one that’s a whole lot cheaper than .Mac. We all know it as Flickr, the site where anyone can upload their photos and share it with other contacts on the web–one of the websites most recognized with Web 2.0. And for a $25/year pro account (which I recently indulged myself with), you can upload as many photos you want, with no upload or bandwidth limits–that’s for a quarter of a price of .Mac and a lot more features. But, when you have a Pro account, that means that you’re going to want to upload all of your photos to Flickr as easily as possible. If you use a Mac, there’s a number of tools out there to do that (because everyone knows that uploading it through the web browser is boring and tedious), including one that Flickr themselves maintains, but the easiest and best tool, by far, has to be the FlickrExport plugin for iPhoto.
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Tags: export, Flickr, iPhoto, photos, plug-in, review, Software

One of iPhoto’s more basic “taken for granted” features is its ability to make a slideshow of your photos. Over time, iPhoto has gained a few more transitions to make the slideshows look a bit more interesting, but the idea hasn’t really changed: you see one photo full screen, followed by a transition to the next photo full screen, then the next one, etc. But what if you want more from your slideshows, something that would really wow the audience, or maybe something that would make them think that you’ve gone WAY over the top? Enter PhotoPresenter.
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Tags: Apple Design Award, effects, iPhoto, photos, presentations, review, slideshow, Software