RIP Delicious Library 19
Wil Shipley, announcing the end of Delicious Library, a media cataloging app: Amazon has shut off the feed that allowed Delicious Library to look up items, unfortunately limiting the app to what users already have (or enter manually).
I wasn't contacted about this.
I've pulled it from the Mac App Store and shut down the website so nobody accidentally buys a non-functional app. John Gruber of DaringFireball adds: The end of an era, but it's kind of surprising it was still functional until now. (Shipley has been a full-time engineer at Apple for three years now.)
It's hard to describe just what a sensation Delicious Library was when it debuted, and how influential it was. Delicious Library was simultaneously very useful, in very practical ways, and obsessed with its exuberant UI in ways that served no purpose other than looking cool as shit. It was an app that demanded to be praised just for the way it looked, but also served a purpose that resonated with many users. For about a decade it seemed as though most popular new apps would be designed like Delicious Library. Then Apple dropped iOS 7 in 2013, and now, no apps look like this. Whatever it is that we, as an industry, have lost in the now decade-long trend of iOS 7-style flat design, Delicious Library epitomized it.
I wasn't contacted about this.
I've pulled it from the Mac App Store and shut down the website so nobody accidentally buys a non-functional app. John Gruber of DaringFireball adds: The end of an era, but it's kind of surprising it was still functional until now. (Shipley has been a full-time engineer at Apple for three years now.)
It's hard to describe just what a sensation Delicious Library was when it debuted, and how influential it was. Delicious Library was simultaneously very useful, in very practical ways, and obsessed with its exuberant UI in ways that served no purpose other than looking cool as shit. It was an app that demanded to be praised just for the way it looked, but also served a purpose that resonated with many users. For about a decade it seemed as though most popular new apps would be designed like Delicious Library. Then Apple dropped iOS 7 in 2013, and now, no apps look like this. Whatever it is that we, as an industry, have lost in the now decade-long trend of iOS 7-style flat design, Delicious Library epitomized it.
What? (Score:4, Insightful)
Still not sure what delicious library does or did.
Re: (Score:3)
It was a cataloging app. Allowed you to scan barcodes of products back in the day and they'd appear on a virtual shelf. People used it to catalog their DVD and CD libraries, though I assume it eventually expanded to cataloging nearly anything you like. The post is right, it was years ahead of its time in terms of the super polished look to it. Haven't thought of it since like 2006 when I last saw them at MacWorld SF. But it was rather popular for the ease of use, the look, and the consistent updates. Very s
Re: (Score:2)
IIRC, it also allowed you to keep track of items you had loaned out. The killer part of it was that barcode scanning, though. It made building your inventory of media so easy. I kept looking for a Windows alternative and never found anything even close.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh yeah, it did allow you to easily track who you'd loaned what to. Certainly great for those who often loaned out games and movies.
Re: (Score:2)
I kept looking for a Windows alternative and never found anything even close.
For DVDs DVDProfiler was the most popular option. Also used bar codes. Used to use it with a modded CueCat.
Re: (Score:2)
It was an interesting concept and visually very pretty. But I never fully understood all the hype. Fairly early on I learned it was a lot more convenient to rip my music and movies, and access them electronically, than to catalog the physical media.
Re: (Score:2)
It was an interesting concept and visually very pretty. But I never fully understood all the hype. Fairly early on I learned it was a lot more convenient to rip my music and movies, and access them electronically, than to catalog the physical media.
I always saw it as effective for my physical media that wasn't easily rip-able and more useful for managing what I loaned out. IE vinyl records, video games for current systems, books, etc. Otherwise, my media server has the rest of my music, movies, and TV shows.
media and collection manager app (Score:2)
imagine a SQL front-end that let you add consumer products to its database from the title, barcode (scan with your phone), etc and could interactively display your collection with pretty thumbnail images. And tag and filter your items. And even do things like make notes or track out loans of CDs, DVDs, books, etc.
see also GCstar. Similar functionality although not as slick looking.
Tracks what physical stuff you had (Score:2)
You could hold a book's barcode up in front of your webcam, and it would download the info from Amazon... including the cover art.
You could then define bookshelves, and tell it where it was. And I think it handled DVDs and CDs, too.
And there was a library feature, so you could track that you had loaned out stuff.
I have an old copy, and have been meaning to update my stuff for a few years now, but it looks like that might not be possible.
Although, it would be interesting to know if they could push out an up
iOS7 (Score:2)
What is delicious library? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
what part of "a media cataloging app" didn't you get?
Not serious. I had to google it and I don't know why I bothered except that lately everyone is saying why can't we have a better/more modern UI/UX immediately, but nobody can say what that is. Aside from everything having rounded corners, that is. Shewt our main site doesn't even include a background image to break up some of that white space..
"Amazon has shut off the feed" that allowed this unmaintained app to continue working - that's the news here. Ama
Worst Apple style apps (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I can't express how much I hated this style of app. its a freakng catalogue. Make it functional. I liked the ease of entry, but the display of everything was terrible. its from the same mindsent that thought that Itunes was an amazing music app. They were both piles of garbage, ux. The pretty look was anti functional.
It's another subset of "enshittification." Like when the ipod/itunes took over from all the interesting MP3 players and audio apps. Remember when you could just plug an MP3 player into a computer and it would just WORK? No software installation, it just popped up as a removable drive and you could drag your music in there. As a bonus, this also allowed you to use your MP3 as a removable hard drive back when such things were wildly expensive. And itunes! Remember when you could just point your music player a
End of an Era (Score:3)
I used Delicious Library since ~2008. I would use it to catalog which movies, books, and CDs I had for both my own accounting and if I ever needed it for insurance purposes. The barcode scanning with a camera and later the iOS app made it quite easy even if the UI of the shelves wasn't the best.
I discovered the lack of metadata loading in very early November and digging around other reports strongly indicated that it wasn't coming back. I since switched to libib. The UI isn't as pretty, it's a cloud service, some items can't be found, but the basic functionality is there and the barcode scanner is much less picky. It also meets the hard requirement of being able to export to CSV so I can go somewhere else if needed.
[Book|CD|DVD|Game]Pedia (Score:2)
Hate Flat Design (Score:2)
Humans can see in 3D, screens have developed to become incredibly vivid, pixel dense, and color accurate. And all we get are boring 2D icons that belong in a NES or SNES game.