I’m still very young, so I don’t want this to appear parental or needlessly critical, but even beyond the sizable developer sacrifices made, I can’t stand by MacHeist because of the “Malcor” fiasco. As someone who works with marketers and who deals with getting out the message, it pains me that these people think that duping a community is good buzz. Worst of all, they show a blatant disregard for the implications of their actions (even their apologies are ridiculous—“Sorry that you didn’t get it,” and the like), almost flippantly saying that people should get a sense of humor. I love humor. Laughing is a pastime. But I don’t paste up fake hack attacks on my blog because I respect my web host and I respect my readership. I play pranks, I do jokes, but I don’t play pranks on the people that are subscribing to my blog for quality content. That just feeds the flames of all the ignorant people out there that say that blogs and the Internet are simply repositories of useless information and Youtube videos.

Developers are free to make whatever decisions they want, but I’d urge people to seriously consider what MacHeist is doing. For me, a lot of the lure of my Mac is the community, and sophomoric hijinks undermine that community and raise serious ethical concerns. I can’t say enough that this is just my two cents, and I don’t pretend to be the last word on this by any means.