Here are a few random thoughts on the applications that are part of the MacHeist bundle (still on sale for another two days!):
- Delicious Library: I’ve actually started using this to catalog my stuff. I’ve got about 100 CDs in there, plus around 25 books, 25 DVDs, and a handful of video games. (I have *much more* to enter, if I want to catalog my entire collection(s).) It works reasonably well. I’ve found that, with CDs, if you want to get specific about which version of a given CD you have (original, import, reissue, etc), you need to go back and forth a bit to find the right one. And the right cover art isn’t always pulled down from Amazon. Still, it’s right a lot of the time, and it’s not real hard to correct stuff that’s wrong. I find that I can enter maybe one CD per minute. Books (so far) have been a bit more straightforward. I’ve just been typing in the ISBN numbers, and I usually get a correct match, with cover art.
- DevonThink Personal: I’d like to say that I’m finding this to be really useful, but I’m not. I’m still using an old version of iOrganize for keeping track of stuff. I don’t see too much of an advantage to DevonThink. Maybe I need to play around with it some more.
- RapidWeaver looks interesting, but I don’t have much use for it right now. I’ll probably play around with it at some point to work on some web site ideas, but I don’t really need it now.
- I’m hoping to use NewsFire to replace Juice, which I’ve been using for awhile now. Juice works fine, but it’s a bit slow, probably because it’s a cross-platform app that’s not really optimized for the Mac. I’m hoping NewsFire will be better, though I haven’t had a chance to try it yet.
- I’m not sure what I’m going to do with TextMate. I’ve been using TextWrangler recently, and I’m pretty happy with it.
- I haven’t really played with any of the other apps in the bundle. A couple of them might be useful.
Overall, I have no problem with the $49 price on the bundle. I’m definitely getting my money’s worth out of Delicious Library, and I’ll hopefully get some use out of NewsFire, DevonThink, Disco, or one of the other apps. There’s been a lot of talk in the blogs this week about whether or not the MacHeist bundle was a good thing for Mac developers or not. Personally, I wasn’t planning on spending any money on Mac shareware any time soon, so right there that’s $49 into the Mac shareware “economy” that wouldn’t have been there otherwise. I imagine a lot of other buyers fit into the same category. In terms of this thing driving upgrade sales, or sales of other products from the participating developers, I can certainly see that happening. I’ll likely buy the upgrade to the next version of Delicious when it comes out. And I may upgrade to the next verison of DevonThink when it comes out, and/or switch to DevonThink Pro.