Get a $453 Mac software bundle for $49

You've heard of the "Apple tax," right? It's the notion that Mac users pay a hefty premium for their hardware.

But I also think there's a "Mac OS tax," meaning Mac software tends to cost more than equivalent Windows software. And deals tend to be fewer and farther between.

That's why I'm glad to see the occasional Mac software bundle. Like this one: the Mac SuperBundle Spring 2012 offers nine Mac programs for $49. Combined price if purchased separately: $453.

The bundle includes the following titles:

• Compartments, a home-inventory program.
• Disk Drill Pro, a data-recovery utility.
• Font Explosion 500 Vol. 1, a collection of -- you guessed it -- 500 fonts.
• Hallmark Card Studio, offering designs for more than 7,500 greeting cards.
• Houdah Tembo, a Spotlight-based search tool.
• Musicbox, which captures online audio streams and turns them into MP3s.
• Panorama Maker 5 Pro, which stitches your photos into cool panoramas.
• RapidWeaver 5, a powerful Web-design package.
• Roxio Toast 11 Titanium, which bills itself as the "ultimate digital media toolkit."

To put this in some perspective, the best price I could find on Roxio Toast 11 all by itself was $67.99.

Of course, that was for a boxed edition. The Mac SuperBundle consists entirely of downloads. (If you prefer disc media, you can get all the programs on a CD for an extra $9.95.) All nine apps are the latest versions, and they're full licenses, not just trials or anything like that.

What I find especially impressive -- and this is something you almost never see with software -- is that there's a 30-day money-back guarantee. However, the terms of that guarantee aren't spelled out anywhere that I can see, so it might be worth contacting Nova Development before buying if you have any concerns.

The Mac SuperBundle is available through May 1. If you were already planning to buy something like RapidWeaver or Toast anyway, this is like getting a whole lotta extra goodies for free.