We all love a good deal. Especially when that includes a load of Mac applications all bundled up for heft of savings. Over the years there have been many app bundle sales, most prominently by MacHeist, which has inspired the likes of other sales like One Finger Discount. In this article, we will cover three sales of app bundles going on this March.

theMacSale

TheMacSale bundle has a collection of 10 apps for $49.99, claiming that their combined worth is over $500. Among the apps are gems such as Path Finder and Shovebox—both apps that anyone can find use for on a day-to-day basis. Path Finder is a Finder replacement, and Shovebox an information snippet organizer that’s iPhone sync capable; they’re included below in the list with the others:

• Path Finder – a replacement for the Finder ($39.95)
• Shovebox – an information snippet organizer ($24.95)
• Supercard – a quick and easy development environment ($179.00)
• StoryMill – a word processor that’s specially suited for story writing ($49.95)
• MiniOne Racing – a three dimensional kart racing game ($19.95)
• Inkbook – note-taking software with handwriting recognition ($40.00)
• VideoConverter Pro – a video and audio converter, and DVD ripper ($49.00)
• Slideshow – make slideshows as standalone apps for Mac, Windows, Flash, etc. ($55.00)
• MacGourmet Deluxe – organize your recipe and wine collection in a database ($49.95)
• Finance 6 – a way to keep track of your bank accounts and manage your budget ($40.00)

Summing up the individual costs for licenses, you get a total of $547.75—upholding the claim and totalling exactly $497.76 in savings. The whole thing seems to be organized by (or at least collaborated with) macZOT, and you can save an additional 5% by entering in their coupon code “MACZOTROCKS” that would bring down the cost of theMacSale bundle to $47.49. That’s a savings of 90.46%.

Edit 1: The date to purchase this bundle by has now been set at March 15.

MacHeist

MacHeist is a well-known name in the Mac community that spawned the whole bundled apps phenomenon. They often hold sales like this one and usually have a range of high-quality apps included in their bundles. This time ’round they offer a collection of 5 apps for just $19.95, and two additional apps that will be unlocked for all purchasers once they reach the sales quotas. They claim a combined app worth of over $260 on their homepage, and they are:

• MacJournal – journal writing with encryption support ($39.95)
• RipIt – a simple DVD ripper ($19.95)
• Clips – clipboard organizer: think Pastebot for the Mac (€19.99)
• CoverScout – add the album covers to your iTunes library ($39.95)
• Flow – an elegant FTP client ($25.00)
• Tales of Monkey Island – a pirate adventure game, unlocked after quota ($34.95)
• RapidWeaver – website creation and publication, unlocked after quota ($79.00)

As of March 3rd €19.99 is just over US$27, so added together the apps total to about $266.05. While their claimed combined app worth of over $260 is correct, it’s worth noting that the last two apps only unlock after sales quotas are reached. This brings the total app worth down to just $152.10, but for a still impressive savings of 86.88%. Once all the apps are unlocked, the savings jump to 92.5%. The MacHeist sale only lasts ’till March 11, and the quota to unlock Tales of Monkey Island RapidWeaver is 50,000 bundle purchases; it’s almost certain that both quotas will be reached in the end due to MacHeist’s popularity.

Edit 1: Looks like the MacHeist directorate have decided to make RapidWeaver unlock at 50,000 purchases, and make Tales of Monkey Island available for all purchasers immediately.

Edit 2: Three new apps were added to the bundle for just a tweet! And they are: Airburst Extreme ($19.95), Tracks (€7.99), and Burning Monkey Solitaire ($24.95).

Edit 3: Last minute addition of Tweetie ($19.95) as an unlockable.

Macbuzzer

Last but not least is Macbuzzer—a new entrant to the bundled apps playing field. Their sale hasn’t begun yet so the site hasn’t been updated. It’s organized by the same guy who brought us Thoughts (which we gave a passing mention before) so expect this to be included in the bundle. Before Thoughts was released, Yum and Family were also packaged in the pre-order—so expect other apps from creativebe software to be part the bundle, most notably their latest release iArchiver. This post will be updated once they release the information, so be sure to keep us bookmarked!

Edit 1: They seem to have a solid release date set: March 11. They also foreshadow MainMenu to be included in the bundle—another app from creativebe software. It’s also implied with the cameras on their website that there will be a total of 6 apps in the Macbuzzer bundle.

Edit 2: It looks like Thoughts will be included in the bundle.

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If your iTunes library happens to be in disarray, with incorrect ID3 tags, missing artist names and album art, then you might be happy to know that there’s an app that can add all those in for you automatically. Pollux, whilst previously free, had to be shut down because the services it used could not endure all the queries made to their servers. However, it returns today with a nominal fee of $10/year. Not bad for keeping your music library updated with the correct song, artist, album, and other metadata names, along with the lyrics and album art. A trial to tag 20 songs is available as a download on the Pollux website; feel free to try out its accuracy for yourself.

Click here to download

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Anyone who has used Flash on a Mac can say that it’s more than just a nuisance. On top of the loading time Flash takes to play a video, for instance, it’s the leading source of application crashes on Mac OS X. In fact, Apple had to engineer a new plugin mechanism for Safari in Snow Leopard that would run plugins as a separate process, so if they crash, they wouldn’t crash Safari itself. In addition to that, while Safari runs as a 64-bit process, Flash still runs in 32-bit. It’s no wonder why Apple doesn’t want Flash on the iPhone and iPad.

Thankfully, the YouTube team has added an option to opt-in to viewing videos in HTML5 in lieu of Flash. (And here’s an interesting tidbit: The HTML5 editors are Ian Hickson of Google and David Hyatt of Apple—clearly someone’s not invited to the party.) You must have a modern browser to support these changes.

To enable HTML5, you must:

1. Visit this link: http://www.youtube.com/html5
2. Click on the link that says “Join the HTML5 Beta”

HTML5 in Vimeo is just as simple. Whenever you are viewing a video, click on the link at the bottom right hand corner of the screen that says, “Switch to HTML5 player” as seen in the image below. Enjoy your crisp, no wait-time video that doesn’t bog down your computer.

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With over 140 iPhone and Mac developers participating in Indie+Relief, exactly $143,872 dollars was raised for Haiti in just 24 hours—making it a huge success. A full list of the sold apps and participating developers are still available on their site. A special thanks to both Garrett Murray and Justin Williams, who made the whole thing possible.

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If you happen to be a Mac user that’s suffering from the organizational condition known as “cluttered desktop” then boy, is this the app for you. If you happen to be a Mac user that has an insatiable lust for eye-candy, then boy, is this the app for you.

I’ve seen this before on Windows, and on the Mac it’s just as mind-blowing. BumpTop is the desktop reinvented, so they say; in a nutshell, BumpTop transforms your desktop to make it more like an actual desktop, 3D et al. Aside from the “floor”, which would be the traditional “desktop” portion of BumpTop, there are four additional walls. Icons can be tossed around like real objects, pinned onto the walls, or even stacked on one another. Icons can be piled according to type, and you can enlarge (or shrink) icons based on their relative importance. BumpTop isn’t just eye-candy: it serves purpose in both uncluttering your desktop and increasing your productivity. Watch the screencast below to get the gist of what I’m talking about.

After testing BumpTop for the past few hours, I think it has some great potential in changing the way you do your desktop computing. As mentioned in the video, BumpTop completely eradicates the need for folders, and finding things couldn’t be easier with the desktop-wide spotlight-esque search. Quick Look is seamless and it even supports multitouch gestures. Double-clicking on any wall will focus in on it with a 90-degree view angle. Why would you need to do that, you ask? There is one more feature BumpTop has that isn’t mentioned in the screencast.

Notes are a clear winner here, truly completing the BumpTop productivity package. They are like dashboard stickies, but unintrusively integrated into the desktop. Another benefit is that the walls can give your stickies context, such as putting reminders on the sides and to-dos in the front, for example.

All in all, BumpTop is good to go as it is, though there are a few things that I believe need to be ironed out. For one, growing and shrinking icons using the trackpad gesture isn’t as smooth as zooming in Finder. It zooms in increments, just like clicking on the buttons would. Secondly, BumpTop doesn’t use an icon’s larger version when you grow it. Instead, it will scale the smaller icon and leave it slightly blurry. It isn’t very noticeable, but since Snow Leopard supports icons that go up to 512 x 512 pixels, it only seems natural to use the larger ones.

As for the future of BumpTop? The app is currently in a private beta and they are open to feedback, so here goes: First of all, finding something is as easy as typing it on the desktop, but it would be great if you had a choice of what to do with it. Like a simplified version of Quicksilver, for instance. Secondly, I think it would be just awesome if BumpTop were able to display other widgets besides sticky notes, such as a calendar. That way you’d be able to view your iCal events right on the desktop. It looks like the Windows version already has photo feed, Twitter, and Facebook widgets, so I expect that it’s only a matter of time before this is implemented in the Mac version. An API for third-party plugins might not be a hot idea, but I’d like to throw it out there as well. And lastly, I wish there was a way that would facilitate designers to easily create more themes. The default gets boring fast, and the theme repository looks like it could use more themes than the handful it has right now.

Be sure to check it out BumpTop—I for one was definitely floored. The pro version with unlimited stickies, search, and multitouch costs $29, and the free version can be downloaded here. BumpTop offers an intuitive, easy to learn interface that’s as practical as it is beautiful.

Check out a few more screenshots below.

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