Get six Mac apps absolutely free

No strings attached, just six worthwhile Mac apps for the grand total of $0.

Remember MacHeist from earlier this year? For $39 you got nine complete, unlocked Macintosh programs worth about $600. And 25 percent of your payment went to one of several deserving charities.

I've got good news, better news, and bad news. The good news is that MacHeist is back, this time with a bundle of six Mac apps worth $154.

The better news is that this time, the bundle's free. Really. Just...free. Download it and be on your way.

The bad news, of course, is that there's no money for charity, nor even an option to make a donation. That's disappointing, and I can't help wondering why the organizers went that route.

In any case, the MacHeist nanoBundle includes Hordes of Orcs, Mariner Write, ShoveBox, WriteRoom, TinyGrab, and Twitterific. I'm not really familiar with any of them (except Twitterific, which is great), but you can read complete descriptions on the MacHeist page.

As it happens, Mariner Write is "locked" until MacHeist reaches 500,000 participants (they're currently just shy of 100,000). I could understand the logic behind this system for the previous bundle, when there was money involved, but now I don't get it.

I don't mean to sound so pessimistic about this. After all, it's free software, and Mac users don't usually get a lot of freebies. So, by all means, grab this bundle while you can: The offer ends five days from now.

[InkyRed]

Will grab, thanks for the heads up! So did you ever figure out exactly why some cnet employees don't get that red C? Also, if you worked with slickdeals.com....doing this same type of thing...you could be Slick Rick...hahaha.

[aggie1993]

I think you meant slickdeals.net.

[tecmitch501]

The reason they're not unlocking Mariner Write until 500,000 participants is that they're trying trying to get us to tell all of our friends about the bundle and therefore increase awareness of the bundle, in turn increasing sales for their next paid bundle.