Essential App Deal

I have written about at least two of the apps included in the new Productive Apps bundle and the two of the combined were well over $50. If you include the other highly-regarded apps, it makes it a difficult deal to pass up, in my opinion.

Launchbar gets use on my machine all day long and is probably my most-used app if you are counting activations on a daily basis.

Fantastical was one of those apps that I wasn't sure I needed until I needed it and it's really great. Write a simple sentence about an appointment and it will be added to your calendar, straight off; no interface to deal with unless you like tweaking. (Don't forget the "/" switch to designate a designate a calendar.)

One thing to note: with a deal like this, you aren't using the App Store so if you like the convenience of having your apps on all machines tied to your Apple ID or enjoy the update features built into the App Store, this bundle isn't for you.

That said, with sandboxing being a requirement for App Store apps in the near future, it's likely that some of these will be disallowed from the App Store anyway (Launchbar, with its system-level access and deep hooks into the OS will never be an App Store candidate, for instance). I wouldn't let App Store integration, as nice as it is, hold me back from pulling the trigger on this deal if I didn't already have these apps.