[5] MacHeist II began in Nov. 2007 with the creation of a character named Malcor, a computer hacker with a grudge against "Apple fanbois."

As a marketing stunt, the owners of a number of small Apple-related blogs were contacted by Philip Ryu and asked to participate in the lead-up to MacHeist II, by making their sites appear to have been hacked by Malcor.

Over the course of these apparent hackings, the parties involved had remained silent and allowed the situation to escalate within both the Apple and Wordpress developer communities, who had grown very concerned by the vulnerabilities and the targeting of apple-related websites.

[citation needed] Over the following 24hrs, explanations and apologies were posted by the owners of macapper.com,[9][dead link‍] macheist.com,[11] glennwolsey.com[12] and applematters.com[13] over their involvement in the stunt and letting it get out-of-hand.

The final MacHeist II bundle contained 14 applications: 1Password, CoverSutra, Cha-Ching, iStopMotion, Tiki Magic Mini Golf, WingNuts 2, Awaken, TaskPaper, Speed Download 4, AppZapper, CSSEdit, Snapz Pro X, Pixelmator with VectorDesigner unlocked after $300,000 had been raised.

On February 13, 2009 the first official Mission began introducing Sophia, a new secret agent played by Lisa Bettany.

The initial apps were iSale, Picturesque, SousChef, World of Goo, PhoneView, LittleSnapper, Acorn, and Kinemac.

[20] Additional "Bonus Applications" Cro-Mag Rally[21] and Times were added March 31 and April 4, respectively, to boost sales.

MacHeist also added Tracks, Airbust Extreme and Burning Monkey Solitaire for free if the bundle was shared on Twitter.

On March, 7, three days before the end of the offer, the number of purchases surpassed 30,000 and Tales of Monkey Island was unlocked.

[citation needed] On September 16, 2012, MacHeist 4 officially launched, after a message from John Casasanta on the previous day.

[26] MacHeist 4 had eight series of puzzle games (called Missions and nanoMissions, from 1 to 4 each) at the end of which users would get free software as prizes and also discount coins for this season's bundle.

One month later, on October 16, the MacHeist 4 reveal show launched the bundle, initially consisting of 15 Mac applications: Bejeweled 3, Scrivener, Realmac Software's Courier, PDF Signer, Mapdiva Artboard], Jurassic Park, Radium, MacWare DiskTools Pro, Ohanaware HDRtist], Firetask, BioShock 2, Corel Painter Lite (which was promoted as originally launched on MacHeist 4) and a 15-month subscription to Evernote Premium.

25% from each bundle sale was announced to be donated to the charity that users choose at purchase time, from the list put together by the MacHeist team.

[citation needed] NanoBundle 3 contained Fantastical, CleanMyMac 2, Totals, Clarify, xScope, iStopMotion, Path Finder and Little Inferno.

[citation needed] Gruber's estimates indicate that the net profits for the MacHeist team likely far exceeded the total charity donation and the royalties paid to participating developers combined.

thought that setting goals to "unlock" NewsFire and TextMate in terms of dollars raised for charity was deceptive and unethical.

[citation needed] However, several of the developers whose applications were featured in MacHeist I, including Wil Shipley, author of Delicious Library, defended their decision to participate in the promotion.

There has been criticism of MacHeist II, with some customers being charged multiple times for the software bundle despite the website proclaiming that 'the order can not be processed'.

In addition to this, the support services provided by John Casasanta and the rest of the MacHeist team has been ridiculed as they initially refused to respond to customer complaints about the problem, or issue refunds for overcharging.