Apparently, the guys at Spritec Software have started a new trend for Mac apps. The company's recently-released Maclings come in "paks" containing four fun and practical apps each. Macling paks are priced at $9.99. Demos are not available but you can check out the official Maclings web page to see them in action during QuickTime movies.

Spritec is currently offering three Macling paks, The Playful Pak, which contains four applications - Pet Skeleton, Dock Fire, Idle Time and Clicksplosion; The Practical Pak, which includes CornerTunes, Front App, Crosshairs and Mouse Minder; and The Peaceful Pak, comprised of Mosaic, Prime Time, Under Pix and Snowy.

I personally found the Pet Skeleton app and the Dock Fire app as the coolest of the lot. As its name suggests, the latter sets your dock on fire. And it looks great! Best of all, the fire sometimes changes color but, since it only does so for just a few seconds at a time, keep you eyes peeled for it.

"We've even heard that Pet Skeleton is drawn to these bright colors and will occasionally draw close and warm his bones by the Dock Fire!" Spritec Software jokes.

Any Macling pak buyer also receives two bonus Maclings (Menu Fish and Leopard Eyes) as well as a "Macling Manager," which lets you access Maclings directly from the menu bar. The ten bucks you pay for any pak also include one year of free updates. Hopefully Spritec issues some, so folks don't get bored of Mr. Lazy Bones' habits and the same backgrounds he visits.

System requirements call for Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) or later.

Maclings are Universal Binary, meaning both PowerPC and Intel-based machines will run them just as smoothly.