MacHeist is offering a new software bundle for $49. This one has a lot of software I already own so I don't see myself taking advantage of it, but if you haven't purchased the earlier bundle, this one might be OK.
The software in this bundle is:
- Awaken
- Cha-Ching
- CoverSutra
- DEVONthink Personal
- iClip
- Overflow
- Wallet
- WriteRoom
- XSlimmer
- Enigmo
- Bugdom 2
- Nanosaur 2
Awaken: This is a great program if you are a business person who travels often and usually bring your Macintosh notebook with you. Just load up iTunes with some good tunes to fall asleep to and to wake up to and setup Awaken to use them. Awaken has a sleep timer that will slowly change the volume of the music playing down to 0 when the sleep timer is up and in the morning it will slowly raise the volume to gently wake you up. I have used it for this purpose and it works great.
I would even go so far as to buy a Mac Mini to use as a replacement for my home alarm clock if it weren't so expensive. You can program alarms in such a way so that you never have to mess with it again. A great app.
Cha-Ching: I got this from the previous MacHeist bundle and I don't really use it since I do all my banking on the web these days. If you don't it's a pretty decent money management program.
CoverSutra: I really like being able to see the cover art of music that I am playing, but I don't like leaving iTunes all the way open. I typically use the mini view. CoverSutra lets you place an image of a CD jewel case on your desktop with the artwork of the track that is currently playing. Plus, it has a menu bar item that allows you to access all your playlists as well as search for individual tracks, artists and albums. This is something I use all the time now.
DEVONthink Personal: I have this program from a much earlier bundle. I have pretty much never used it and I haven't updated it. I really can't review it and won't here.
iClip: I have this program too. I tried to use it back in the day, but it was just too cumbersome to use easily, so I stopped using it. I now use Savvy Clipboard ($12) which is a much better clipboard manager and is cheaper than iClip by itself.
Overflow: I bought this program a long time ago back when I was looking for a decent program launcher utility. I played with it for a while, but found it a little difficult to use. I then switched to Quicksilver (free), but found that program way to hard to take full advantage of. I settled on LaunchBar ($19.95). It's almost as powerful as Quicksilver, but has easy to use menus to help you use it and has a decent help file too.
If you don't mind the way Overflow is activated, it's a pretty good launch manager. I just wish it had a better way of editing the panes it uses to display applications.
Another program to look at is DragThing ($29). It's a little pricy, but it's the most powerful program of it's type. I used to use it back in the days of OS 9 and I even purchased an upgrade to use it with Tiger and Leopard. I don't because of it's use of screen real estate, but if you like this kind of program, it's the best.
Wallet: Now this is an odd choice since this bundle is being billed as the "12 Top Mac Apps". I think 1Password ($34.95) is way better than Wallet even if it is more expensive. Wallet is what I started with though. I used it for quite some time, but was unable to upgrade it for some reason. I sent them several emails about my problems with upgrading, but I never got a response back. That's when I switched to 1Password.
1Password has a secure way to access the information you store in it on the web as well as on some mobile devices including the iPhone.
WriteRoom: I don't own this one and haven't checked it out. I'm not a writer which is what this program seems geared toward. It basically helps remove all distractions associated with a computer when you are using it so that you can concentrate on your writing task instead of dealing with incoming email, IM's, Twitters, etc... It's probably very good and the retro "green screen" look is pretty funny. Reminds me of my days with my Apple ][ and monochrome monitor.
XSlimmer: I have heard conflicting views of using a program like XSlimmer to save hard drive space. I suppose as long as you have all your install images, it's safe enough to use. It helps you save hard drive space by removing the code in applications that you don't use. If you have an Intel Mac, then it will remove the PowerPC code and it will remove the Intel code if you have an older G5/4 Mac. I believe it also removes the languages that are not being used as well from programs that offer internationalization such as French and Spanish versions as well as English.
If you have a program like AppZapper ($12.95) or CleanApp ($10), then you won't need XSlimmer since those programs do the same thing as XSlimmer as well as help you uninstall software you no longer use.
Enigmo, Bugdom 2, Nanosaur 2: are all games. I bought Enigmo on my own, but got Bugdom 2 and Nanosaur 2 via other software bundles. They are pretty fun. I especially like Enigmo. A nice program that reminds me of a real game from Ideal called "Bing Bang Boing". (I love the internet! Where else would I be able to find a copy of an ad from back in 1972 about a game that never really took off!)
written by Dave M.
\\ tags: bundle, cheap, Macheist, Software
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Electronic Arts released Spore's Creature Creator yesterday so that the many folks that are waiting and waiting for Spore to be released is released. Spore is scheduled to be released September 7th.
I spent about 30 minutes creating a creature for the first time. It was quite easy and pretty darn cool to mess with. According to the program, over 170,000 creatures have been created since the program was released a week ago (?) to a limited group of people and then the public release yesterday.
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