MacHeist

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MacHeist

URL	http://www.macheist.com/
Commercial?	Yes
Type of site	Macintosh shareware
Registration	Yes
Owner	John Casasanta, Phillip Ryu, and Scott Meinzer
Created by	John Casasanta, Phillip Ryu, Scott Meinzer, and Adam Betts
Launched	2006

MacHeist is a website that resells Mac OS X shareware. The site has become known for its marketing tactics. These tactics include challenges (or "heists") that entitle successful customers to free software licenses and/or discounts, as well as the concept of selling software in a bundle that increases in size as more customers purchase the bundle. The site was founded by John Casasanta, Phillip Ryu, and Scott Meinzer.

1 MacHeist I
2 MacHeist II
3 Criticism
4 Clones
5 References
6 External links

[edit] MacHeist I

MacHeist I was a six week long event that the site ran at the end of 2006. It culminated with a week-long sale of a bundle of ten Mac OS X shareware applications for US$49. Prior to the sale, a number of challenges (or "heists") were posted on the MacHeist site. These challenges typically offered cryptic clues to Mac-related websites, where the answers could be found. Users who successfully completed the heists were rewarded a US$2 discount on the bundle for each heist completed, as well as free licensed copies of various Mac OS X shareware applications that were not included in the final bundle. This inaugural promotion proved to be quite successful, selling more than 16,000 copies in one week.^[1]

The final bundle sold for US$49 and was available to the entire Mac community, regardless of participation in the heists leading up to the sale. It contained Delicious Library, FotoMagico, ShapeShifter, DEVONthink Personal, Disco, Rapidweaver, iClip, Newsfire, TextMate, and the choice of one Pangea Software game (Bugdom 2, Enigmo 2, Nanosaur 2, Pangea Arcade). Newsfire was added to the bundle after the sale of approximately 4,000 bundles, and TextMate was added after approximately 5,600 bundles were sold. The other applications were available from the beginning of the sale. After the two later applications were unlocked, they became available for no extra charge to the initial purchasers of the bundle.

Another aspect of MacHeist I was that a large portion (US$200,000) of the proceeds were donated to charities.^[2]^[3] This amount was divided between the following charities: United Way International, Direct Relief International, AIDS Research Alliance, Cancer Research and Prevention Foundation, Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, Hunger Project and Save the Children.^[4]

[edit] MacHeist II

MacHeist II began in Nov. 2007 with the creation of a character named Malcor, a computer hacker with a grudge against "Apple fanbois." As a prank, the owners of a number of small Apple-related blogs were contacted by Philip Ryu and asked to participate in the MacHeist II marketing scheme. On Nov. 16, glennwolsey.com was defaced for 24hrs with the image of a rotting apple. The site was hosted by Media Temple[1] and runs the wordpress blogging engine. Both Media Temple and the site designer were apparently unaware that Glenn Wolsey had given control of his site to a 3rd party. However, during the ensuing investigation, they quickly discovered the malcor was a phony. E-mail requests sent to Media Temple were ignored while those sent to Glenn Wolsey suggested an ongoing investigation [2].

A few days later, the macapper.com site was defaced and the site owner, Miles Evans, wrote that the hack was due to a Wordpress vulnerability [3].

It is worth noting that Glenn and Miles are all involved in the macapper.com site. [4], [5].

Again, the parties involved remained silent and allowed the situation to escalate, both within the Apple and OS developer community.

Finally, applematters.com and iphonematters.com were defaced. In this case, however, their hosting company (EngineHosting) immediately took the site down and began an investigation. When they discovered the prank, they notified both their clients and the public that neither their commercial product (Expression Engine) or their hosting service were vulnerable to this attack [6]. Subsequently, Hadley Stern apologized and admitted the hoax [7].

Over the following 24hrs, the owners of macapper.com, macheist.com and glennwolsey.com posted explanations of their involvement [8], [9], [10].

The final bundle contained 14 applications: 1password, CoverSutra, ChaChing, iStopMotion, Tiki Magic Mini Golf, Wingnuts 2, Awaken, TaskPaper, Speed Download 4, AppZapper, CSSEdit, Snapz Pro X, Pixelmator with VectorDesigner unlocked after $300,000 had been raised. There was an offer for people who refer a friend to receive LaunchBar and NoteBook. In all, $500,000 was raised toward the various charities.

[edit] Criticism

MacHeist I was criticized by several members of the Mac community, most notably John Gruber of the Daring Fireball blog,^[5] Paul Kafasis of Rogue Amoeba Software,^[6] and Gus Mueller of Flying Meat Software.^[7] Some independent Mac software developers who chose not to participate in MacHeist felt that the proclamation from the MacHeist organisers that it was "The Week of the Independent Mac Developer" was an inappropriate form of marketing.

While exact royalty payment amounts have not been released to the public, Gruber and others questioned the value of the promotion to the participating developers, citing offers made to developers of around US$5,000 per application, whereas the MacHeist bundle grossed nearly US$800,000. Gruber's estimates indicate that the net profits for the MacHeist team likely far exceeded the total charity donation and the royalties paid to participating developers combined. Additionally, some thought that setting goals to "unlock" NewsFire and TextMate in terms of dollars raised for charity was deceptive and unethical.

However, several of the developers whose applications were featured in MacHeist I, including Wil Shipley, author of Delicious Library, defended their decision to participate in the promotion.^[8] They cited exposure to new users, the potential for increased upgrade revenue in the future, and other factors for their participation in MacHeist I, despite the seemingly low amount of revenue generated directly from MacHeist.

There has been criticism of MacHeist II, with some customers being charged multiple times for the software bundle despite the website proclaiming that 'the order can not be processed'. In addition to this, the support services provided by John Casasanta and the rest of the MacHeist team has been ridiculed as they initially refused to respond to customer complaints about the problem, or issue refunds for overcharging.^[9] As of March 2008, this has largely been resolved.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Clones

After the initial MacHeist I promotion, several users of the site created imitation sites. Most of these sites proved to be much less successful than the original. However, on 9 July 2007, MacUpdate began a promotion that very closely resembled the MacHeist I bundle sale, in that it sold a bundle of Mac OS X shareware applications that increased in size with a greater number of sales. The MacUpdate bundle has sold nearly 2,000 copies in the first two days. MacHeist became an affiliate with this bundle, selling additional applications that MacUpdate did not along with the MacUpdate bundle. The additional apps offered by MacHeist were Exces, browseback, Linkinus and later WriteRoom. Also included was beta access to Pixelmator and FlowFTP.