A few people have been getting quite irate about Macheist's "Week of Independant Developers". They believe that selling good apps for next-to-nothing is an insult to the indie Mac developers out there.

In Gus Mueller's words
I tend to agree with Gus's logic: selling a whole bunch of your work for next to no cash does seem counter-productive, these developers don't all own a Lotus, and have extra cash falling out of their ears...

So, Justin Williams over at CarpeAqua has started The REAL Week Of Independent Mac Developers.
I think it's a great idea, and I think we should all get on board.
My only problem is that I don't really have any apps that I know I want/need.

What apps will you buy for the Real Week of Independant Mac Developers, and why?

Couldn't agree more.

http://islayer.com/blog/?p=93

yep thats our contribution

Digg if you agree...

http://digg.com/apple/The_Mac_develo...rts_developers

Now I feel guilty for buying the bundle
(it was a pretty sweet deal for apps I was going to buy anyways)

i dugg out of comradeship, though i have used the macheist freebies. (appaday just shits me though).

by the way, macupdate have now got a "cheap app a day" promo on their site!

I agree, in part, that it is silly to give away the apps for stupid prices. *But*, not all the apps I have seen given away or sold cheaply are the current versions. For example, when the freebie iClip was given away, it was the previous version, not the latest. Needless to say, a sweetener was given to try and get people to upgrade to the latest version. I have also seen some of those apps that are no support - read the FAQ only.

I don't think it is as cut and dry as we think. How much would it cost to get decent advertising for these apps? Yes, the usage rate skyrockets in the short term, but what is the usage rate without something like MacHeist? What other apps does the developer produce? Maybe the app they throw away in promotions like this is the "loss leader" to get more views on their website, and more people to try out the better apps on the site. Have a read of what "Mike K" has to say in the link to Gus's comment.

I'm on the fence with this one. Part of me thinks it could potentially ruin some good shareware developers, but the other part of me thinks things like MacHeist have pulled in a lot more people into shareware than sites such as Versiontracker.

Long term it will have little impact on the bulk of the apps that were given away or sold at MacHeist.
The one's that are sold are virtually all big name apps that dont really need to extra sales but obviously any money is good money i guess.

As Marc and I said in the article on islayer.com "The Week of the Independent Mac Developer" is not a good description of what is really going on at MacHeist.
If it was truely "The Week of the Independent Mac Developer" then the developers would be getting all of the money and the MacHeist guys would be getting none.

People complain that the mac gaming industry is along way behind the pc and console gaming industry. MacHeist is a good example of why. Developers work hard and then you get a heap of users that will only by there apps when they are so cheap the developer is virtually getting nothing out of it

As others have said dont buy from MacHeist.
If there is an app there you want then buy it directly from the developer and give them the reward they deserve

At the end of the day perceived value is what makes money for developers.

If you give away an app that you've created, at the end of the day the user will think "hey its free, why should I pay for it".

As a web developer who creates products I have felt the sting of a devalued product, and I can definitely say, short term loss does not in 9 out of 10 cases create a long term gain.

I actually find that putting the price up not only brings better clientelle but allows us to create and maintain a better product, which means everyone wins.

I'm in two opinions about it.

The good: Firstly I bought the bundle, it was good value - I already own RapidWeaver and Disco though (both are good programs - though Disco needs more work). Most of the programs in the bundle I wouldn't have bought on their own, but seeing they're included I'll be using some of them (Delicious Library, DEVONthink, FotoMagico, Newsfire).

The bad: I know what it's like to have my skills as a designer undervalued - I deal with it a lot of the time with clients and it's not nice! So I can understand the frustration some devs are feeling getting less (or feeling the pressure of needing to sell for less) money for apps that they have put a lot of work into. But again, you can also look at it from the perspective of getting money from people who otherwise wouldn't have bought the program - for example Delicious Library, which even though it's a good program I wouldn't have bought on it's own for US$40. So they've got money out of me that they wouldn't have otherwise - and I will use the program.

Just because I bought this bundle doesn't mean that I won't buy full-price shareware, and I think it's the same with a lot of users - infact, I've bought two great programs this week Wallet and SuperDuper both at full price because they were programs that I needed.

I think it's funny that iSlayer and Marc wrote what they have when they give their software away for nothing (and their widgets are great!). Doesn't giving stuff out for free undervalue the work that you guys do?

Taken from the article "Please note that we’re talking about applications that developers wish to sell, and are using these marketing techniques to boost sales. We’re not talking about freeware (like the widgets found here)."



We're working on paid-for apps right now. They won't be $3 or $8... they're likely to be much more, but they'll be worth it. I can't tell you how much effort we're putting into them. We feel that most of our widgets should be given away for free, so we do.

I don’t think I can say it any better than Joshua (taken from the comments on Gus’s blog).

“No one is pissed that they are good at marketing. What everyone is upset about is that they’re doing something extremely good for themselves and trying to make it out like it’s extremely good for other people, when really, they are the center of it. Again, if you can’t see this, then oh well, but I guarantee you if you saw the numbers on MH or macZOT, you’d be surprised.

It’s like a retail chain with a 90% markup. It’s absurd. It reminds me of the WalMart scenario, and how WalMart will work extremely hard to get products at their store (promising exposure of course) that often it will negotiate a price that is even below the cost for the manufacturer, in effect putting them out of business to get exposure. The difference with WalMart however, is you don’t hear them exclaim “The day of the product manufacturer” on their ads. No, they exclaim “lowest prices,” which indeed is correct…

…It’s a quick way to score some numbers, devalue a product, screw over a dev, and make some money. Pure and simple.”

That's the argument. If MacHeist presented themselves as "we've screwed the developer down on price so we can bulk sell to you!!!11!!!!", then there'd be no problem. But they don't. They're saying they're helping out the underdog, poor developers with no marketing skills and making a LOT of coin in doing so.

Edit: Here's a list of the developers who don't seem too happy with MacHeist:

The Real Week Of Independent Mac Developers (Justin Williams)
Week of the Independent Mac Developer (Gus Mueller... VoodooPad, FlySketch, FlyGesture)
The Economics of MacHeist (Rory Prior... NewsMac Pro, InstantGallery)
Whose Week? (Paul at Rogue Amoeba... Lots, including Audio Hijack and Fission)
The Joy of RAID, Three Martinis and the MacHeist (Fraser Speirs... Xjournal, FlickrExport)

I haven't seen any comments from developers who WERE involved though.

Yep everything on our site right now is free but as marc said it wont be that way for much longer.
That said we have done commercial development before so we are not completly new to selling software.
We give away our widgets because we took a firm stance from day 1 that widgets should never be sold. They should be given to the users to enjoy. I spent 6 months working on iStat pro 2 and about 3 months on iStat pro 3 but i still have no interest in making any money from them except from donations which are completly optional.

Its upto each person to decide if they want to buy the macheist bundle but just remember when your buying it your supporting the site owners more then any of the developers

Random thoughts...

- Interesting to see that the article from iSlayer has it's own news article on the front page, when many others get crushed in a summarized News post. Neither good nor bad, just interesting.

- On the Macheist: if no-one had been interested in this deal, Macheist would have been 10 x however much per developer. So it seems like something of a risk to them. On the other hand, as a success, 10 developers get publicity through either infamy in participating, or through kudos for the bargain purchase. Any publicity is good publicity, and in a small market (the Mac software market) crowded with the free open-source apps and the developers trying to make a buck for their work, methinks that any step forward is a good one.

- On the Macappaday: Again, I guess its a promotion thing, this time through getting your wares into as many hands as possible. The apps being made available appear to be promotional versions (either slightly less crippled than the trial version, or a previous version of the app), more akin to advanced shareware than the commercial apps.

Fwiw, I applaud the negative stance taken here, since it's getting more people to click into these events (I didn't know about Macheist), and check out these apps. I can't imagine that the negativity was planned, so your efforts in promoting the events, and subsequently the apps, are free, and I'm sure much appreciated!

ha
check it out, looks like theres gonna be another similarly styled promo, this time for games -
www.macappaday.com/permalinks/2006/12/12/what-a-leak/


looks like theyre trying to set up a bit of viral marketinng.. badly! read the comments, they get owned

I'm not sure I understand that... please explain in more detail.