mendax.org

Mac users ought be familiar with MacHeist, an annual “holiday bundle” of applications that are sold for much cheaper than the sum of their individual parts. This past holiday season marked the second annual MacHeist bundle, sold for $49 that contained a good number of applications, a handful of which are very useful (some even mentioned in mendax.mac).

One of the included applications is Yazsoft’s Speed Download, a program that organizes downloads from various programs. It also includes an integrated FTP client, and though I was skeptical of how useful the program would be, I’ve kept it on my system to see how well I liked it after a couple months of use.

As many on the blogosophere are reporting, Yazsoft decided to screw users of Speed Download 4. Or, more accurately, they decided to screw the users of Speed Download 4 who received the application as part of the MacHeist bundle, even though they specifically noted during the MacHeist offer that the bundled version of Speed Download was not upgrade restricted in any way, and was identical to any other Speed Download purchase.

Why then, were MacHeist purchasers asked by their Speed Downloader 4 installations, days ago, to upgrade to the latest version? This is a common application feature, and generally a good one considering that upgrades are generally free. Per Yazsoft’s upgrade policy, recent purchasers were to receive free upgrades, but this time, Yazsoft decided to spontaneously change their stance and deny the free upgrade to MacHeist owners. While Yazsoft is now offering MacHeist owners a discount, the cost is still contrary to their original advertisement.

In other words, Yazsoft used the MacHeist offer to introduce their program to new users, knowing full well that they’d release a new version soon. That wouldn’t be a problem if they were honest about their intentions to charge for an upcoming upgrade, but instead they lied, and are now making sad excuses in an effort to charge existing users.

The most annoying thing about this is that users of Speed Download 4 were “forced” to upgrade because of the update notification, but it was not clear that their registration would not work in Speed Download 5. This means that those who used Speed Download from the MacHeist bundle are left with an inoperable version of Speed Download.

Thankfully, many people are upset about Yazsoft’s behavior, and one MacHeist organizer appropriately referred to Yazsoft as “weasels”. According to the official forum thread on the matter, a resolution is being sought, but Yazsoft has already soured the mouths of a portion of Speed Downloader’s user base.

We here at mendax.org are uninstalling our copy of Speed Download, and intend to boycott Yazsoft as a result of their nefarious actions. We encourage others to do the same, and let your voice as consumers be heard.

Popularity: 6% [?]