A few weeks ago I purchased the MacHeist II bundle, a program that hooks up Mac users with great deals on software and earns money for charity in the process… This year they donated almost half a million dollars. I’ve got no beef with MacHeist. I do, however, have a problem with Yazsoft, the vendors of Speed Download, which was included in the MacHeist bundle.

You see, Speed Download, like most applications, automatically checks for updates. In fact, Speed Download installs them automatically as well. This worked out just fine until version 5.0 was released. Right on cue, Speed Download installed the update and popped up a notification that I should relaunch the application.

The difference between this and previous updates is that version 5.0 was not included in the license I purchased. Without warning, without confirmation, Speed Download “updated” itself to a 21 day trial version. I entered the registration information, which I purchased less than three weeks ago as part of MacHeist. But since this update was from version 4 to 5.0, my old license was no good.

From the Speed Download website:

Users that have registered SD 5 from Jan 01, 2008 to Feb 12, 2008 can upgrade to SD 5 for FREE.

Purchases made via the MacHeist 2 bundle not applicable for free upgrade.

So after three weeks of use, the software I legally purchased from Yazsoft converted itself into an unusable, nagging, annoying shareware trial. As a consolation, Yazsoft offers me the opportunity to buy an upgrade for only $15. This is the same bro-deal they give to anyone who already uses any other commercial Mac download utility.

Luckily MacHeist also included AppZapper, so I won’t have any trouble getting rid of Speed Download.

Thanks Yazsoft. You represent everything I hate about commercial software.