Dec 6th, 2008
MacUpdate Bundle: Worth it?
I’m not sure this is unique to Mac users, but there have been various software bundling efforts made in the past, some of which I’ve bought. These are packages of a number of software programs, oftentimes shareware, sometimes commercial, at a heavily discounted price. The current bundle offered by MacUpdate is a package of ten (or eleven with a bonus for early purchasers) different applications that have a combined list price of about $450 that’s currently selling for $49.99.
Putting aside the questions of whether this is a wise thing for developers to participate in (there are a few older MacBreak Weekly podcasts that talk about this topic), the question is whether or not this is a worthwhile buy.
Initially, the answer appears to be yes; after all, a discount of almost 89% seems very difficult to ignore. However, knowing that there are people out there who just buy something in order to buy something–or buy something because it’s on sale–the question comes down to whether or not the software is something you’ll use.
My guess is that at least some of these items are certainly ones people will use. For instance, Drive Genius, a hard drive maintenance tool, can be incredibly worthwhile, and RapidWeaver, a Web site development tool, may be very useful. Other items on it may be less useful (for instance, if you don’t cook, MacGourmet Deluxe might not be worth any amount of discounting).
In the end, the answer to this question is a qualified yes; if you use just about anything in this bundle, it’ll be a purchase that’s worth it, and if you fall in love with more than one of them, it’ll be more than worth it. But if you pick up the bundle and don’t do anything with the software, then you’ve basically thrown money away. So consider if you’ll actually use the software in the bundle before you pay out any money for it–or really, for anything else.
