Edible Apple

MacHeist, in case you haven’t heard of it, is a once-a-year promotion where consumers can purchase a bundle of Mac software for a highly discounted price – and by discounted we mean $900+ worth of apps for less than $50 bucks.

So yeah, it’s an unbelievable deal for consumers, but Simone Manganelli has been particularly critical of MacHeist, with the thrust of his argument being that developers are being screwed over as MacHeist is collecting the majority of the sales revenue.

Delving deeper, Manganelli sent emails out to a number of developers whose products have appeared in MacHeist bundles and asked them a number of probing questions about why they participate in MacHeist, and what long term effects the promotion has on their business.

We’re not quite so sure why Manganelli is so adamantly opposed to MacHeist, but his correspondence with Mac developers is quite enlightening and well worth a read.  If you don’t have time to read it all, Manganelli lists some take away points for quick digestion.

1. MacHeist is, first and foremost, used for marketing. This is, by far, its main purpose. All of the developers, even the more well-known ones, benefit greatly from the brand and product awareness generated by MacHeist. They are all happy to sell their apps at a substantial discount in return for the sheer recognition that MacHeist creates for their company.
2. MacHeist is extremely effective at marketing. They do it very well. Time is simply better spent letting the marketers do the marketing.
3. None of the developers are particularly concerned about saturating the Mac marketplace with their products. Every developer believes that even MacHeist’s reach is a miniscule proportion of the entire market for Mac apps, and that MacHeist helps them reach customers that never knew they wanted their app.
4. Since MacHeist is temporary and only comes once a year, developers don’t fear that it causes consumers to value their apps less. In comparison, the factors causing the continual push towards 99¢ iPhone apps are always in effect.

If you’ve got time to kill, or are particularly interested in absorbing developer and marketing related information, you check out the post in its entirety over here.

And for the record, we here at Edible Apple think MacHeist is undeniably awesome, and like a developer brought up in the full interview, a similar deal for iPhone apps would be off the chain.

via Daring Fireball