Enjoying your Macintosh experience? There may be one ingredient you’ve been missing out on: the many amazing products created by the Mac community’s extremely active independent software development community.

That’s why we’re declaring this The Week of the Independent Mac Developer, and in an effort to spread the word about these hidden gems, we’ve put together a collection of some of the best darn software available on the Mac for a steeply discounted $49.

MacHeist is something that managed to more or less completely slip by me until around 4 days ago. It’s a great scheme set up by several large Mac software developers to help raise money for charity, and get their product’s noticed. You have the chance to buy a bundle of applications for an incredibly discounted price - the cream of the crop of Mac applications.

Software includes Delicious Library, Shapeshifter, NewsFire, Disco and more. I’m tempted by the price, but already own Shapeshifter and NewsFire - shame I bought them so long ago, could have saved a packet now! Have a look, and remember that 25% goes to a charity of your choice!