Every year, I find myself looking forward to the Macheist Bundle. Macheist is an event each year where you can win free Mac shareware by completing different missions known as heists. At the end of the event, a bundle of Mac apps is put on sale for a limited time. The apps themselves would cost over $400 if purchased separately, but you can get them all in the bundle for only $49. If you completed all the heists during the event, the bundle would cost you even less - only $39.

Now the bundle is obviously not going to be all things for all people. You may already own some of the apps in the bundle, or have no use for them. But the Macheist Bundle is a great way for switchers to get some great new software for their Macs, and even for long-time users to discover some new software that they’ve never heard of before. I bought the bundle as soon as it was released, and have receipt #67 to prove it. Not all of the apps in the bundle are appealing or necessarily useful to me, however, most of them are surprisingly useful, fun, and have found a home in on my Mac.

1Password

The first app of the Macheist II bundles was 1Password. This is one of those apps that you either hate or you love. And I can’t say I really loved it (I actually uninstalled it from my system). This app is designed to be a Keychain replacement. It is meant to store all of your different passwords, credit card information, serial numbers, etc, and let you access all that data through the use of 1 master password. I am doing all that through Keychain now, and do not particularity like to replace things that Mac OS X does so well.

Coversutra

This has got to be my favourite app in the whole bundle. Not everyone will fall in love with this, but if you use iTunes to listen to music on your Mac, you will. MHII bundle customers get exclusive access to Coversutra 2, which is drastically changed from version 1.2. How can you improve an iTunes controller? Coversutra now has a new interface, and allows you to search your entire iTunes collection in a Spotlight-esque interface right from a menubar item. Of course it still offers Last FM integration, and universal keyboard shortcuts that allow you to control your music from whatever app you’re in. Not to mention that the MH bundle gives you updates all the way to version 3. Coversutra simply rocks.

Cha-Ching

The next one is a bit of a tricky one. Cha-Ching, one of the greatest casual money-managment apps for the Mac, is a beautiful and elegant app. I love it and use it everyday to manage my incoming and outgoing transactions. The only problem is, I already own this app. While that my be a bit disappointing, Macheist is allowing this license to work with the upcoming version 2 of Cha-Ching which would have been a paid upgrade. So in the end, I’m looking forward to getting a free upgrade for version 2.

iStopMotion

iStopMotion is a very fun and powerful stop-motion animation software that lets you create time-lapses. This is an application that I’ve wanted for quite awhile, and was thrilled when it was in the bundle. I know my sister will have a lot of fun with this app, and it will also come in handy when making video presentations. I created a quick little stop-motion video with it in under 15 minutes, and it turned out quite well.

Awaken

Simply the greatest alarm clock application on Mac OS X, Awaken 4, which MH bundle buyers were given exclusive beta access to, takes Awaken to the next level. With a beautiful, flawless interface, Awaken lets you set alarms, egg timers, and sleep timers that will use custom sounds, or iTunes music to alert you. I don’t use Awaken just when I’m sleeping though. When I have a job to get done, I will use an egg timer to motivate me to work on the project. Really great app.

AppZapper

AppZapper is the essential app that every Mac user should have. When you are uninstalling an app, it will find hidden preference files, and delete them along with the actual app. I already have many licenses to AppZapper, as it is very popular. This one from the MH bundle is just another addition to my collection. AppZapper 2 is coming out later this year, and from the small demo, it looks awesome. However, I have no need for this license as AppZapper has free upgrades for life.

TaskPaper

TaskPaper is one of those applications that make you think the Directorate of Macheist were running out of ideas. They claim it a great GTD (Getting Things Done) application, but I disagree. Best put, it is a glorified text editor. I have no use for this, and find the free app Anxiety to be much more useful.

CSSEdit

CSSEdit was one of the apps that made the bundle a must-have. If you are into web development, and you haven’t tried this out, stop reading this right now, and go try it. CSSEdit makes editing CSS so simple and painless, and is what the whole Macheist site was designed with. This is an awesome application, and essential for any Mac web developers.

Snapz Pro X

Snapz Pro X used to be the ultimate Mac screenshot and screen capture utility. Not anymore. Now screencasting on the Mac is ruled by iShowU, a new application, that makes screencasting much more easier, and instantaneous. I have no real use for Snapz Pro X, and find it to be another one of those applications that was just “thrown in”.

Pixelmator

The final application in the original MHII bundle was Pixelmator, the “mini-Photoshop” image editor that uses GPU-acceleration to produce some amazing results. Pixelmator is a great app for casual to amateur image editing and composition. But it’s no Photoshop. Not by far. Pixelmator will choke up under a file a few MBs large, while Photoshop will chug along seamlessly. Nonetheless, Pixelmator is a perfect light-weight image editor, and will be ideal for most people.

SpeedDownload

Originally, the bundle included 10 Mac apps. But today, Macheist has begun adding even more apps to the bundle for the same price. SpeedDownload helps to download and upload large files to and from the Internet in a jiffy. While I am not using it as my primary download client, when I need to download a big file, SpeedDownload is only a click away.

???

From the look of the Macheist website, one more app is yet to be announced. This will bring the total number of apps in the bundle to 12, and their value to over $400. Chances are, with this being the last app announced, it’s going to be something big - and exciting.

From the looks of things, Macheist has done a really great job hyping the bundle, and getting it on all the popular Mac news sites. With 12 amazing applications for only $49, this year’s bundle really is a steal, and is a perfect gift for the new Mac switcher, or even a veteran Mac user. Not all of the applications will be up your alley, but many of them will be. The Macheist bundle is one of the greatest, and most affordable ways to get great applications for your Mac.