A quick update today to let you know that I’m pausing my daily curation of Tech Deals, at least for the time being. Not too many of you have been purchasing tech items through my site and so the end result is that I make approximately $0.33/hour curating tech deals. That means I’m spending a lot of time on them for not much and even though its not all about the money for me, that low amount also means that you don’t find them particularly useful. If I can find a way to bring them back in a more useful way in the future, I’ll consider that–and I’m open to your feedback–but, for now, we’ll stick with books and with apps.
BTW, the new Telegram and Signal channels are doing quite nicely and Signal is actually becoming my go-to place to see deals myself. It’s great to see them all one quick place. Check it out!
And I’m proud to say that there are now 4,300 followers across all our channels. That’s amazing. Thanks for your support to keep making MDM Deals better! As always, I rely on your support to keep everything up and running. Would you Buy Me a one-time Coffee or support me ongoing on Patreon with perks for you? You’d be awesome if you did. Thanks!
The last weeks have seen a massive exodus of people leaving privacy-intrusive WhatsApp for the far better, more secure, and privacy-protecting apps of Telegram and Signal. Since so many of you are flocking there and my goal has always been to support every platform I can, I’m proud to say that MDM Deals now has much improved Telegram support and, for the first time ever, is now on Signal!
Brand-new platform: Signal!
I’ve used Signal for years as my go-to messaging app and love its robust privacy protection–I’m now super excited to say that MDM Deals is now on Signal! Deals will come in once a day with a full text description of the deals, with emoji so you can easily tell them apart. This makes it a really great place to check in once a day for a complete, scannable list of all the deals without having to trust an algorithm to show you what you want or be afraid that you missed something. It’s pretty awesome, if I do say so myself.
If you’re on Signal, join the open MDM Deals group! And if you’re not on Signal, delete WhatsApp and get private, secure communications from now on with Signal (free!). As a perk, join the MDM Deals group and you’ll get access to me on my most-used platform. I’d love to meet you there!
Telegram: Much-improved and expanded
This was fun to figure out and actually requires IFTTT Pro along with some nifty Javascript I paid someone to develop for me–but the improvements are so worth it. I’m so excited to announce it to you!
First off, the main MDM Deals Channel that has all the deals has a much improved system so that iOS & Mac App Store apps come in with previews and full content. I’m still working to get all other deals to appear with full content–it’s actually quite complex–but their titles now appear with emoji so that you can easily see what something is.
Second, I’m pumped to announce the creation of seven brand-new Telegram channels that allow you to get a more fine-tuned experience to see just the deals you want to see and ignore other deal types that might clutter up your view. I thought about keeping these as channels just for patrons, but I couldn’t help myself and am releasing them publicly:
If you’re on Telegram, click the links above to join these public groups–and spread the word to your Telegram friends! If not, download Telegram, delete WhatsApp, and exchange a privacy-intrusive app for Telegram (free)!
Another tweak
You’ll notice going forward that while I will always curate deals on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS apps and games–that’s the core of MDM Deals and its not changing–I’ll only be curating books, audiobooks, and tech deals when I have time. I’m in the middle of launching a couple other businesses–more on those later!–and so some days I won’t have time to curate book and tech deals.
One other quick note
You’ll notice that I had previously named “releases” or updates to MDM Deals like 1.5, 1.6, etc. Well, I found myself trying to hold back updates because I had some really big things planned for MDM Deals 3.0. I’ve thus decided to just label my updates with the year and the update number–in this case 2021.1–and I’ll just release updates as they make sense to release rather than to hit an arbitrary number.
I’m excited to announce MDM Deals 2.8 “Yikes, that’s better” with a bunch of changes and improvements to make discovering great deals even better. Read about how to Shut Mark up, ads that don’t stink and how to block them, the end of spam, why to trust me, and more
Ads that don’t stink
Ok, let’s face it, the ads that were on the site before were terrible. Spammy and clickbaity with “You’ll never guess what she said to her husband” nonsense that was totally irrelevant to 99.99% of you (there’s always that one person…). The ads stunk, the monetization stunk, and the experience stunk.
I am super excited to let you know that I’ll be using Google Ads on the site now, which allows me more granular control over which ads appear so that they’ll actually be relevant and not clickbait. In my tests, I’ve been really pleased to see ads appear for Parallels 16, Wikibuy, Casetify, and even specific apps on the App Store–rather than distracting from the site, they showed other ways to save money or related apps that might interest you. Yikes, that’s better.
Block ads with impunity
Now, I know a lot of you hate ads and trackers. I do too. But without Apple’s App Store affiliate program–ended over a year ago now–the ads enable me to keep this site free for everyone rather than having it for members only. And when sponsors come to the site, ads will go away–you can thank the sponsors by checking out their product
But I get the adblock thing. So here’s my deal for you: join my Patreon for any amount–even $1/month–and I’ll give you “Adblock Amnesty” so you can block ads without a guilty conscience that you’re preventing me from getting paid for my hard work. I curate around 250 deals a month, so that’s just half a penny a post.
Support via ads or Patreon and we’ll be great! Break the deal and…well, a thousand angry internet goats will haunt your dreams forever as you lose internet karma for denying me hard-earned ad revenue…
So support the site (via ads or Patreon) and have good karma and no goats. See? Way better.
I’m excited to announce a completely revamped Patreon page with more perks for you–and benefits for all MDM Deals fans when we hit certain numbers!
First, EVERY patron now gets access to custom filtered emails, in addition to supporting this site with Adblock Amnesty. As a Patron at any level, you can get one ad-free email each day with just the deals you want. Don’t care about books? Filter those out. Don’t have a Mac? Say goodbye to those. Get rid of everything you don’t want. It’s the best way to get MDM Deals each day–and now its available for Every.Single.Patron.
Second, I’ve fine-tuned the tiers to bring you better perks at lower prices, including an all-new Deal Alerts perk. Maybe you know exactly what app, book, or piece of tech you want to buy and you don’t want to look through the deals every day to see if it went on sale. Now with Deal Alerts, just let me know what you want to buy and I’ll tell you when it goes on sale! This is an exclusive perk for Patrons who pledge as Fan+ or Fan Pro levels! I’m super excited about being able to serve you this extra way!
Third, shut me up about supporting this site! Each day I remind you of what I did to serve you that day, but you can shut me up–and remove ads! When we get 50 patrons I’ll stop those daily reminders and when we get 75 patrons I’ll remove ads site-wide! Your patronage can benefit those who are in a harder spot than you and shut me up all at the same time. Nice.
Fourth, for a limited time only, you can get a special gift from me for your patronage! All patrons on November 5th, 2020 will receive a special MDM Deals sticker. They’re super cool and I can’t wait to get one to you!
I can’t tell you how many sites recommend that I trick you into clicking an affiliate link so that when you buy cat food tomorrow, I get affiliate revenue from you.
That’s ridiculous and a complete violation of the principles that guides MDM Deals: it’s not treating you how I want to be treated, it adds friction to your life rather than taking it away, and it violates your trust of me because you don’t know if my curation is for my benefit or for yours.
Today there are two changes I’m announcing to increase your trust and prevent you from clicking on affiliate links so you save time. You come first, not me:
First, all apps will list star ratings if they have them. Previously, if an app only had a few ratings, they wouldn’t appear as I didn’t want to distract you–but I realized that was violating trust. So now, app star ratings will appear no matter what they are. (Unfortunately, Amazon doesn’t allow me to show their ratings and Apple Book ratings are available to me, or else I would include those).
Second, when I use an affiliate link, I will explicitly mention it on each post before the link appears. If there’s no mention of an affiliate link, there is none and I get absolutely nothing from your purchase (become a Patron!) Initially I just had this disclosure on my legal page so I wouldn’t distract you, but I decided that listing it every single time will help you trust me and my curation. Who knows? Maybe someday I can remove affiliate links entirely because there are so many Patrons.
Building trust with you all, even if it hurts my revenue. Yikes, that’s better.
The end of hashtag & flair spam
For a while, MDM Deals on Twitter and the alternate Reddit sub had a spam problem. Some deals, announcements, summary, and sponsors would post not just once–which would be what you’d expect!–but half a dozen times. It was an unfortunate result of my system (I’ll spare the details), but those days are over.
I actually paid someone to develop some code and I’ll spare the details, but it works beautifully. Now, every post will appear just once and all items have hashtags or flair, making for a way way better experience without hashtag and flair spam.
If you’ve left MDM Deals’ Twitter or Reddit because of the spam, try it again. It’s WAY better.
Misc stuff
Some other smaller changes I’ve made–it’s been a busy season!–but aren’t too big:
Apps from the App Store and StackSocial now use the official app descriptions rather than rewriting my own. I’ll still add my own comments, but no need to reduplicate that work!
I now support deals for iOS & Mac cross-platform apps where you can pay for it outside the App Stores. This was pretty fun to develop and will enable me to better serve you, as there are some great apps and services that do billing outside the App Store. Yay!
I now support Amazon product groups instead of singular items. Previously, if Anker had a sale, I had to list every single item which took up a lot of space. Now I can post a link to all their products and give you an overview of them. Should be way better!
Yikes! That’s way better
So that’s a ton of changes and, believe me, a TON of work behind the scenes to make this all possible. Every day I spend tons of time improving MDM Deals, finding deals, and curating just the best for you. If you have ever saved money or discovered something, please support my work on Patreon. It’s better than ever.
Hey all! As you may recall, I launched Tech Deals as part of MDM Deals 2.6 and then quickly suspended Amazon tech deals because I didn’t have a method to post them which met my standards for integrity. I am excited to say that after much research and trial, I believe I’ve come up with a good solution–and so the deals are back!
Tech Deals: What to Expect
Every day, I will post ONE post on mdmdeals.com that contains all Amazon Tech Deals for the day; that post will include pictures, prices, a description, whether or not I recommend it, and an affiliate link to download the item from Amazon.
To comply with Amazon’s rules, I can’t publish that post with prices and direct links to all my channels; instead, what you’ll see if a list of the items on sale with a link back to my website so you can get current prices and see more details.
Updates to Book Deals & Whaller
As much as I loved curating Book Deals & Audiobook Deals, these took a disproportionate amount of time to curate (up to an hour a day) and just weren’t worth my time for how infrequently you were interested in them. To put numbers on it, I made an average of $0.36/hour, so…yeah…not so good. However, when a book I love goes on sale, I’ll still publish that through because there’s still some great stuff
One other minor thing–I will no longer be supporting Whaller as a publication channel. Only one of you followed there and I started to get some errors on the channel, so it is being discontinued as of today.
I have some other great stuff in the pipeline, so stay tuned!
And as a quick reminder–if you have saved money or discovered something through MDM Deals, would you give back a portion of that to help me keep the site up and running? I’d love your support, whether ongoing via Patreon or a one-time coffee via Buy Me a Coffee. Thanks!
Compact Size & Superior Performance: GaN tech & PI chipset make the charger 50% smaller than a standard 61W MacBook charger, slim enough to carry anywhere. The components will keep cool, reduce power wastage & Maximize charging efficiency to over 93% based on the tech advantage.
Wirecutter’s runner up pick for a cheap, small, portable charger
Prices pulled from the Amazon Product Advertising API on:
Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.
Prices pulled from the Amazon Product Advertising API on:
Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.
Prices pulled from the Amazon Product Advertising API on:
Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.
Prices pulled from the Amazon Product Advertising API on:
Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.
Prices pulled from the Amazon Product Advertising API on:
Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.
Prices pulled from the Amazon Product Advertising API on:
Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.
A bunch of family & friends asked me how we lived through 6 months of enforced home quarantine — I wrote up my top 10 tips. Has nothing to do with deals, but I thought it valuable to share with you to help you out during this time.
Quick update: I am temporarily pausing most of Tech Deals as part of MDM Deals–not because of COVID-19 but because I need some time to figure out how to balance complying with Amazon’s rules while maintaining my values of integrity. Read on to get the full scoop.
You’ll notice that deals today don’t include prices. Unfortunately, I’ve learned that Amazon doesn’t allow prices that could become out of date. I’m looking into solutions, but for now you’ll have to go to the Amazon page to see the price and discount—just trust me that they are big enough discounts to be “fantastic” 🙂..
Thanks to the coronavirus that has hit my city in Asia, my family has been in lockdown for the past few weeks–don’t worry, we’re safe (so far!)–but I’ve taken the extra time to update MDM Deals. Today I’m rolling out brand-new Tech Deals, support for Audiobook Deals, and updates to Book deals! Read on to learn more!
Brand new! Tech Deals!
On last month’s survey, a vast majority of you said that you’d be interested on seeing deals for tech hardware & accessories, and I am excited to let you know that they are now here! These deals will start slowly as I build out my system, and I’m still rolling this out to all channels, but in the next week you should see tech deals slowly showing up in your feeds.
Guiding principles: There are millions of tech products and accessories and dozens of stores that sell them, so Tech Deals won’t even attempt to be as exhaustive or comprehensive in its coverage as App Deals, but there are still gems I run across each day that I’ll curate for you. Tech Deals will include discounts on things like Apple hardware, cases, cables, speakers, routers, chargers, etc.–basically things that someone in the Apple ecosystem would love and use (so not Samsung computers, Google Home devices, or Amazon Echo speakers).
For those of you who said you’d buy me a coffee for adding in tech deals, well, here ya go！
New: Audiobook Deals
I’m excited to say that I will now be curating audiobook deals on the Apple Bookstore! This will automatically start showing up in your feeds this week. There aren’t nearly as many deals on audiobooks as books, so these will be more rare. For ways to see the deals, see below.
As always, my goal is to serve you, helping you discover awesome apps, books, and gear and save money in the process. If I have served you, I’d love your support to keep this site up and running. You can do that one-time through Buy Me a Coffee or on an ongoing basis through Patreon. Both are awesome.
The survey results are and I’ve been hard at work changing things in light of the results. Today I’m excited to announce the most significant change to MDM Deals to date–a change so big, in fact, that even the tagline of the website has changed. Ready? Drumroll please…
MDM Deals: Discover great deals on fantastic apps and books
Yup, that’s right: movies are gone and books are here. Read on to learn about 3 big changes to MDM Deals:
Bye bye movies
The survey results made abundantly clear that you weren’t so interested in movies. In fact, 80% of you said that you’d be happier without movies, so they’re gone. For the 5% of you who said you’d buy me a coffee for removing books, well…here ya go:
Hello, books
A significant majority of you said that you’d be interested in deals on ebooks–and so I’m excited to start curating ebooks this week! Ebooks will appear tonight on MDMDeals.com and I’ll be rolling them out to all 20+ channels over the course of the week. As always, I’ll do my best as I do to provide filtering options so you can ignore ebook deals if you like. Four other things to note as we get going:
I picked the arbitrary price point of $7.99 to begin curation. There may be occasions where I list books on sale for more than $7.99, but most will be $7.99 or less. I’d love your feedback on if that’s the right price point.
Curation
While there’s only a few million apps on the App Store, there are hundreds of millions of books. That makes deal curation all the more important, it also means my ebook curation will reflect my interests more than my app curation does. For example:
I have no interest or expertise in Romance novels, so you’ll never see those
I love history and biographies, and because my history interests are more about US and China, you’ll see more of that
I’ll do my absolute best to curate to a general audience, so your feedback is super helpful, but you’ll definitely see my interests and personality reflected in ebook curation–for good and bad :-).
Book genres
My present plan is to curate ebooks in the following genres. In alphabetical order:
Biography & memoir
Business & personal finance
Fiction (more rare, mostly best sellers & classics)
History
Lifestyle & home (more rare, but Marie Kondo deserves to be curated)
Mystery & thrillers (more rare, but Tom Clancy deserves appearances)
Non-fiction
Parenting (more rare)
Professional & technical (more rare)
Reference
Religion & spirituality (more rare)
Sci-Fi & fantasy
Science & nature
At present, I intend to NOT curate the following genres:
Cookbooks
Fiction (apart from best-selling or classic works)
Graphic novels
Health, body, & mind
Politics*
Romance
Sports & recreation
Travel & adventure
Wine & food
*I’m interested in politics, but I don’t want to politicize MDM Deals by curating to my interests, nor will I attempt to keep choices “well-balanced,” so I’ll just ignore the category. I will, however, curate biographies of political leaders across the spectrum because we can all learn from the lives of people like Reagan, Clinton, Bush, & Obama.
I really appreciate your feedback on the survey; it has been most helpful identifying ways that MDM Deals can do better going forward. As I have time to grow MDM Deals, here’s my initial priorities for 2020:
Develop ebooks into a full-fledged part of MDM Deals
The launch of something I’m calling Dealworthies, which I can’t wait to tell you about.
Adding paid custom price drop alerts so you can choose to be alerted when a specific item goes on sale
As always, your support of the site is very much appreciated! I run this all in my spare time and give up significant time each day to find and publish the deals for you. If you appreciate what I do, would you buy me a coffee or join my Patreon?
Just a couple days left to win some of the $60 I’m giving away
He’ll me out by taking this 9-question survey on how to improve MDM Deals—it takes an average of 4 minutes and you could win some of the $60 in gift certificates & promo codes I am giving away
There’s some big possible changes to MDM Deals coming up and I’d love your feedback on them! As a thank you, I’m giving away $60 worth of App Store gift cards & promo codes!
I really want to thank the New Year Powerpack for their support of MDM Deals this week. It’s sponsors like them that enable me to get deals to you—Sonix you haven’t checked out their bundle yet, you really out to. Unclutter at 50% individually is a steal—so is Tumult Hype, Taskpaper, Default Folder X, and Sip—and the entire bundle is worth it just for 2 or 3 of those, but you get 11 total handpicked apps
You may have noticed that the Xmas & New Year’s PowerPack was a recommended item on the monster list of Christmas & New Year’s deals — well, after publishing that list, the developer reached out to sponsor MDM Deals and I’m so glad he did, because there’s some really great items in this bundle that you don’t want to miss:
Aeon Timeline – The timeline tool for creative writing, project and case management. Normally $50, now 50% off
Tumult Hype 4 – Create. Animate. HTML5. Standard Edition. Normally $50, now 50% off
Unclutter – Files, Notes & Clipboard Manager for Mac. Normally $20, now 50% off
TaskPaper 3 – Plain text to-do lists for Mac. Normally $25, now 50% off
Better Zip 4 – The Next Generation of Archiving. Normally $25, now 50% off
Sip – Color Picker & Organizer for Mac. Normally $10, now 50% off
Permute 3 – The easiest to use media converter. Normally $15, now 50% off
Path Finder 9 – File Manager for macOS. Normally $36, now 50% off
Mosaic Pro – Effortlessly resize and re-position windows on your Mac. Normally $30, now 50% off
Default Folder X – Enhanced Open and Save dialogs for macOS. Normally $35, now 50% off
HyperFocus – The Distraction Blocker for macOS. Normally $15, now 50% off
Not only is each individual app in the bundle 50% off–already a great deal–but if you buy the entire bundle, you get $311 worth of apps for just $64–that’s a whopping 79% off.
Supercharge your productivity in 2020 with the Xmas & New Year PowerPack. My thanks to the developers of this collection for sponsoring MDM Deals this week!
I did it again—despite sick children, 10kb/sec internet, & travel—I looked through 2,500+ apps on sale for Christmas and curated just the best deals. There’s some great stuff here
Did you know I make no money from App Store affiliate links? Instead, I rely on people like you to keep this site up and running. Would you Buy Me a Coffee?
Follow @MDMDeals on Twitter to see deals; mute hash tags to filter the deals you want!
I just got home after 14 hours of traveling & planes…and there’s no way I can get deals out today. However, I’m hard at work prepping the massive list of Christmas deals, so look for that very soon!
Have I saved you money? Would you keep this site running by Buying Me a Coffee?
I’ve long sought to publish deals to every possible channel that I could, knowing that few people would go out of their way to check my site each day. But after Black Friday took me so long, I decided that I needed to optimize my workflow in order to save time.
The crazy thing is that, because I post around 7,000 deals a year, a ten-second inefficiency adds up to nearly twenty hours over the course of a year. Yikes–that’s half a workweek. With that idea in mind, I looked over my channels and asked–is the way I’m posting to this channel worth the time it takes? Sometimes the answer was yes–like posting manually to Reddit with its over 800 followers–but it was extremely revealing. Here’s some channels I’ve changed:
Twitter – I had been manually editing long tweets to get them under the 280 character limit, but I estimate this took 30-45 seconds per tweet, meaning the yearly cost was 83-124 hours (let’s call it 100). Yikes. I tweaked my system and it’s now fully automated–each tweet won’t have handcrafted perfection and some may now end mid-sentence, but it will save me two and a half work-weeks a year.
Instagram – I had been initiating each post by webhook, but with some clever automation (Zapier is triggered by Pinterest and posts to Buffer which posts to Instagram!), I was able to fully automate this. It will save about 14 hours a year
Savings of 114 hours with some simple changes–not bad! What else needs spring cleaning? Unfortunately, running a time-cost analysis on a lot of channels meant that they just weren’t worth supporting and are now being ended.
WhatsApp – The hardest choice because it is new and growing, but it takes me about 80 hours to post here. Just not worth it unless the number of followers increases massively (feel free to join that group–if it ever starts up again you’ll know!)
Viber, KakaoTalk, Voxer, JioChat, Kik, Google Hangouts – I’ve only had these channels a few weeks, but no one signed up–and supporting them would take 142 hours a year. Nope.
Mastodon – I really want Mastodon to work, but this only gained 5 followers and cost 23 hours a year. Cut.
Flickr – A new channel, but after a few months there’s no followers at a cost of 22 hours a year. Duh.
Line – Fully automated, but after 2 years there’s no followers. No point in keeping it.
LinkedIn – This one was fully automated, but its automation was complicated, kept breaking, and needed constant repair. Probably 8 hours a year of fixes for 8 followers. Definitely not worth it. Ended.
So MDM Deals is now down to “only” 21 channels, but each channel is now fully automated–with the exception of Telegram (I’m testing something!). The total time savings? 389 hours, or nearly ten work-weeks. That’s 2 and a half MONTHS of time saved.
The lesson learned? Bigger and more and better isn’t necessarily better. Some individual channels are now “worse”–but the overall business is now better since I can spend my time finding & curating deals–which only I can do–rather than posting to channels–which computers can do for me. I just wish I had done this sooner for all the time and work it will save me!
Speaking of time and work, I still spend around an hour each day curating deals and I make no money with App Store affiliate links (Apple ended that program). If you appreciate my work every day, I’d love for you to support it via a one-time donation of coffee or ongoing support on Patreon. Thank you!
After a crazy amount of work, MDM Deals 2.3 was launched in time for the monster list of Black Friday & Cyber Monday deals. Welcome to all the new followers and subscribers who found MDM Deals over the holiday! I look forward to helping you discover great deals on fantastic apps and movies.
As MDM Deals has grown and expanded where I’ve published, the amount of time it takes to publish each individual deal has grown, so MDM Deals 2.4 is about optimization so I can spend more time finding deals and less time publishing them.
As such, I need to hear from you if you’d like to follow MDM Deals on one of the following channels. I’m willing to support these channels if enough of you want to use the channel, but there’s no point in supporting them if just a couple folks are there! Join a channel below to show your interest or email me other thoughts
Thanks for your help! I look forward to serving you better!
Mark
P.S. I’m currently enjoying an iced mocha as I work on the site right now, but I make no money to pay for it with App Store affiliate links. Instead, I rely on my followers to support my work and make it worthwhile! So would you Buy Me my next Coffee?
Get 20% off of a $50 App Store & iTunes Gift Card. An excellent way to save 20% on everything on the App Store & iTunes: iCloud Drive, Apple Music, Apple Arcade, TV+, subscriptions, & more
There’s over 6,000 apps that are on sale for Black Friday. I’ve looked through them all, then curated & organized a list of just the best ones. Check it out and spread the word
🆕 The brilliantly designed digital magazine Flipboard now supports MDM Deals, with magazine options for All Deals, iOS, iPad, Mac, Movie, Game, & App Deals!
Due to heavy volume of deals, not all will make today’s email newsletter, but check in at the website and on this Black Friday page to see them all when it goes live in a few hours
I’m glad to announce the safe arrival of my third son—he and mother and doing really well. Light deals today because we’re still in the hospital, but these were too good to pass up. (You’re welcome).
My monster Black Friday deals list is coming up soon—if you haven’t bookmarked the page yet, do so now so you’re ready! Link below
No new deals today because I’m in the hospital with a new baby on the way. Be back as soon as I can—in the meantime, wanna buy my wife a coffee? We’re sure gonna need it the next few days (who am I kidding, months)
In honor of my wife going into labor any day now, MDM Deals 2.3 “bundle of joy” is now live, with support for iPadOS, a better Reddit, 7 new channels, and more. Check it out!
Any day now, my wife will give birth to our third son and I’ve been hard at work getting the rest of this update finished before our little bundle of joy arrives. After lots of effort, it’s here, featuring support for iPadOS, a better Reddit, refinements, movie improvements, 7 new channels to follow, and new ways to support MDM Deals!
Initial support for iPadOS!
Apple separated iPadOS from iOS this summer, and MDM Deals now supports this, separating iOS items from iPadOS items. Here’s what you’ll see new:
Support for iPadOS channels/filters
MDM Deals on Twitter now uses hashtag #iPadOSDeals for items that run only on iPad; you can mute that filter if you don’t have an iPad
iOS & iPadOS RSS feed – This includes all items that can run on iOS OR iPadOS. This is the RSS feed to use if you have an iPhone & iPad
iPadOS RSS feed – This will subscribe you to all apps that run on iPadOS, including universal iOS apps. This is the RSS feed to use if you only have an iPad and what to see all apps that can run on it.
iPadOS exclusive RSS feed – this will subscribe you to apps that ONLy run on iPadOS (excludes “universal” iOS apps). This is an RSS feed to use if you only care about apps that only run on iPad
Note: Apple’s change means that following an iOS channel will no longer include iPad-exclusive apps that do not run on iPhone. I’m working on creating new options so you can get deals all in one place if you own an iPhone and iPad, but it’s pretty complex to do that. In the meantime, the “all deal” options will always include both!
Movie improvements
I dug into the data on movies and found out that none of you buy movies when they’re $9.99 per film. As a result, I will publish deals when the price per film is less than $9.99, unless it’s a movie that never goes on sale or a really fantastic film. You should see fewer movies going forward–but what you see should interest you more.
Also, there’s a new RSS feed if all you care about is movie bundles. Subscribe to the Movie Bundle only RSS feed here.
A better Reddit
The largest community of fans are over on Reddit, so I’ve worked hard to make it a better experience. Here’s the improvements you’ll see!
Everything should look and read better, with the addition of an invisible ASCII character that will prevent the sentences from being all smooshed together.
r/AppDeals – Just apps for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS (excludes games & movies)
r/iOSappdeals – Just apps for iOS (excludes Mac, games, & movies)
r/iosgamedeals – Just games for iOS (excludes apps, Mac, movies)
r/moviedeals – Just movies (excludes iOS, iPadOS, & Mac deals)
Interested in another kind of filtered subreddit? Let me know and I’ll see what I can do!
7 new ways to follow MDM Deals (& improvements to existing)
One of what makes MDM Deals different from other sites is I don’t make you come to my site every day to get the best deals–instead, I publish deals nearly everywhere so that you can get deals coming to you, no matter where on the internet you call home. MDM Deals 2.3 is no exception and comes with new places to get deals!
Improved channels
Apple News – The most elegant way to get deals. I’ve added channels for iPadOS Deals, iOS & iPadOS Deals, App Deals, Game Deals, and iOS & Mac Deals
Pinterest – My fastest-growing community. I’ve added boards for iOS Deals, iPadOS Deals, Mac Deals, Game Deals, and App Deals
Brand new channels
Flipboard – The brilliantly designed digital magazine now supports MDM Deals, with magazine options for All Deals, iOS, iPad, Mac, Movie, Game, & App Deals
Google Hangouts* – The group chat by Google, now with a MDM Deals group chat channel for your convenience. Deals delivered once a day.
KakaoTalk* – One of the most popular messenger apps worldwide, now with a MDM Deals group to find the deals you want. Deals delivered once a day; notifications available.
Viber* – Good ole’ Viber, now with a MDM Deals group for getting deals once a day delivered to you. Set up notifications so you never miss another deal!
Kik* – Recently resuscitated from an untimely end, Kik is back and after tons of work, MDM Deals supports it. Deals are delivered once a day.
JioChat* – Popular in India, but useful around the world, now with a MDM Deals group where deals come in once a day.
Voxer* – Not just for voice messages, you can join this MDM Deals group to get deals coming to you once a day via text.
*Because there is no way to automate these channels, I publish to them manually. If more than 5 people use the channel, I’ll keep them–but if not, it’s not worth the time to manual post there.
Other refinements
RSS subscribers rejoice! Feeds will look much better with the introduction of an invisible ASCII character instead of spaces. The result will be a nice visual break between title and content, whereas it was all smooshed together before
The “Download on the App Store/iTunes” logos have much higher quality AND Mac apps now tell you if it’s on the Mac App Store. Looks way better if I do say so myself
Old download image (left); new on the right
One more thing…
Phew, that was a lot, but there’s one thing more! Since Apple ended the affiliate program, I’ve relied even more on readers like you to support MDM Deals and its continued development. Until now, though, the only way to do that was via a Patreon monthly pledge, but not everyone likes a monthly charges. I get it. That’s why I’m excited MDM Deals is now on Buy Me a Coffee!
This site is coffee-developed and coffee-fueled (in fact, I’ve got a mocha frappe with me right now). If I’ve saved you money or help you discover an app, would you buy me a coffee?
Thanks so much for following and for your support!
Quick bit of news: there will be no deals tomorrow, Wednesday 8/7/19. I normally can arrange my life in such a way to carve out of it a space for finding, curating, and posting deals, but not tomorrow. I should be back Thursday and will catch up then. Thanks!
With MDM Deals 2.2 released, I’m hard at work at expanding into several new channels, including Viber, Skype, KakaoTalk, Voxer, JioChat, and Kik. If you are on any of those platforms, I’d love your help to test publishing deals there! Learn more and sign up on the beta page! My thanks in advance to anyone who helps out with the beta channels!
