If you’re looking for a gift to buy yourself this holiday season (or someone else, I suppose, though I never find that people much like software gifts), the MacUpdate Holiday Bundle has just arrived and is well worth considering. Like MacHeist and many other software bundles, MacUpdate’s offers a heaping helping of software at a bargain basement price.

The bundle includes 11 quality Mac apps, including both utilities and games, and if you’re lucky enough to be one of the first 10,000 buyers, you also get three additional pieces of software at no extra charge (around 1,200 had been sold at the time of this writing). Best of all, if you’re unsure about any of the apps included, you can download a preview package that includes trial versions of each.

The total cost of the Holiday Bundle is $49.99, which is a nearly 90 percent discount from the cumulative regular price of $446.77. Even if two of the apps on offer are part of your prospective to-buy list, there’s no better time to snatch them up. Here’s a quick look at what’s included in the deal:

• Path Finder – Finder replacement. Looks like Finder, but features numerous enhancements, including a dual pane file browser, tabbed browsing, easy Mac package navigation, disk image creation and OS X command line access.
• Socialite – Used to be EventBox. It’s an aggregator for your social networks and news sources, including Google Reader, Facebook, Twitter and RSS. Learn more in our recent article about the program.
• Yep – PDF and document management app. It’s described by the developers as an iPhoto or iTunes for your iWork, Office and PDF files. You can navigate your file structure to find them and move them, and also preview them within the app.
• Radio Gaga – Nothing to do with the Lady of the same name. It’s an internet radio player and recorder. You can add your own stations or use the built-in directory of more than 10,000.
• Garage Sale – eBay auction creator and client. You can build your auction using templates and a WYSIWYG editor, broadcast them using Twitter, and also keep an eye on auctions you’re bidding on. PayPal support is also built-in.
• DragThing – An OS X launcher. It’s a dock, but more versatile than the one that ships with OS X, and you can have more than one using DragThing. Billed as a way to keep your desktop clean, so that you can have your files available without wasting all that space and memory.
• Speed Download – Download manager and accelerator. I’ve never used one of these, but this one does have the advantage of doubling as a full-featured FTP client, which is good enough for me.
• HealthNut – Calorie tracker and food diary. Just in time for helping exacerbate the guilt of stuffing your face over the holidays, and helping you stay on track with your consequent New Year’s resolution to lose weight.
• PCalc – Scientific calculator application. Features support for hex, octal and binary calculations and unit conversions, and is completely scriptable. Also includes a companion dashboard widget.
• Machinarium – The much-loved Mac puzzle/adventure game. You’re a robot who has to travel through a world of robots to find your robot lover. On the way, you’ll run into countless puzzles and brain teasers.
• iRip – A utility for getting music from your iPod onto your Mac. This is the one that made headlines a little while ago when it had to change its name to iRip because Apple took issue with its original name, “iPodRip.”

That’s the basic bundle, but as mentioned, you also get three other apps if you buy it soon. Those three are PowerTunes (manage multiple iTunes libraries), Holiday DVD Templates (self-explanatory) and FlagIt! (flag add-on for Apple Mail). The MacUpdate Holiday Bundle is only available for around 12 more days, so if you’re going to bite, you’ve got less than two weeks to do it.

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Via mobile provisioning, for promotional copies to be granted, developers would have to get the UDID of the touch device from each person receiving a copy and from there generate a .mobileprovision file to send with the actual application file that would bind that app to each specified device. Once both files were received, the end user would drag and drop them into iTunes to sync it. With the promo code method, all that is eschewed for a system that as easy as redeeming an iTunes gift card.

In the future, we can see this opening the door for more than just a developer/reviewer relationship, and extended to contests and giveaways. With complexity removed and the fact that the codes are linked to a specific app, developers would be able to invite people to win copies of their app without relying on gift cards, which is a hockey method since there value of the gift-card may not match the price of the app thus costing the developer additional money and there’s no guarantee that the recipient will actually use it to buy the app.

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If you live in Rhode Island or Connecticut, you can get an instant rebate on your purchase, and it might be worthwhile to take up this offer if you live close to those states. Otherwise, you have about 30 days to claim your rebate, so don’t forget!

Bear in mind that a Mac Mini does not qualify for this deal.

I will be using this promo when I buy an iMac just before the deal ends on September 15th.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks