Recreating Delicious Library in 2025?
dingyu.me
dingyu.me
> In the past year or so, Mac development had shifted from applications providing new functionality that appeared at the dawn of OS X to applications (and ideas) built around flash and sizzle, with plenty of marketing hype to fuel the fire. his had created something of a toxic atmosphere in the Mac development world. A rift between the old school, with its plain but functional apps, and the new school of flashy but frivolous apps, has developed. ... I dubbed this new school “The Delicious Generation”.
https://weblog.rogueamoeba.com/2006/11/06/the-delicious-gene...
Apple adopted a similar interface for Newsstand on iOS and it seemed to be widely reviled during the pushback against skeuomorphism.
Of course if your requirement is that you use specialized Linux tools, then anything that is not Linux will not satisfy you.
I think you want to edit that.
Apart from that piece of advice, I don’t see how your comment relates to mine, and have nothing to add.
Macs are lacking compared to other platforms when it comes to games, which everybody admits. You can say that it is lacking as a server, but I would doubt that. More expensive yes, but you could serve anything you'd like from it if you want to.
When it comes to very industry specific software, which is used by maybe 3 companies worldwide, those applications do not have any importance for comparing platforms.
What matters is stuff for which there are no workable alternatives elsewhere.
I can try and write a condescending automotive metaphor, if you like those, but I’d prefer not to.
But we have to limit ourselves to somewhat common use cases. If a company is making a piece of software especially for one or two big clients in their industry, then that has nothing to say about any personal computing platform.
Your example Docker is software which has been especially created to deal with the shortcomings of Linux. Of course we cannot expect it to be great on any other platform. Likewise, we cannot blame MacOS for lacking specific software that has been made by people who explicitly hate Apple, such as a lot of self hosted and open source stuff.
Most Mac users do not mess about with virtual machines or WSL/WSLG, as in your examples. But there are myriad personal and professional use cases that are supported by good native software. In comparison Linux is lacking in native apps. No good photo editor, no good office suite, no good e-mail client. So I wouldn't call it a strong platform if we compare.
And it isn't copium to me. It's quality of life question to be able to use native software, and as a non-programmer I can be more productive with GUI software that isn't some laggy cloud service.
Aside from games, or industry-specific apps (like the goddamn KNX configurator, or CNC controllers), everything is there, at least for me, and with consistent and stable user experience.
> Aside from games, or industry-specific software, everything is there
This is funny. Apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the freshwater system, and public health… what have the Romans ever done for us?
The fact that people will choose a different platform and begrudgingly emulate the software that's stuck on Windows is a knock against Windows, not a knock against the other platforms.
How do you feel when the television you bought uploads your viewing history for profit? Or the car you purchased sells your driving habits?
This app was purchased, there was no "this is FREE because we can see and sell your whole cd/book collection info"
I mean, I don't disagree on a philosophical level, but on a day-to-day I'm fairly stuck using both of those things.
The world we live in is obviously less than ideal, and I'm not sure I'd condemn a small software developer out of hand for participating in capitalism...
The new iPhone Mirroring app exemplifies this. A few years ago, Apple would have given it a fun name like Magic Mirror or Teleport. Instead we got an unimaginative name and an icon with a grey background and a centered image of an iPhone. Clever.
A few years ago, Apple would have never shipped such a feature because the conventional design wisdom within the company would be that the user problems that this solution aims to solve can be better solved in other ways (that’s why we got features like handoff, continuity, etc).
A feature like this shipping is indicative of a greater mindset shift - perhaps a greater willingness to interpret user requests more literally (not too dissimilar from the MacBook Pro redesign going back to having all the ports).
People want faster horses? Well let’s breed faster horses for them, we’ve got the best horse breeding program in the world!
Going the opposite way with discs, to rip my DVD collection at the time, I used RitIt. While the UI was seemingly unnecessary, it is initially what led me to find the concept of ripping all my DVDs more tolerable. After the novelty wore off, it had a feature to automatically start ripping on a disc being inserted, and would auto-eject at the end. This let me keep a stack of DVDs next to the computer and simply feed in the next disc when I saw one sticking out. After a few days I was done. I probably would have put this off for years (or forever) with more utilitarian software. The same can be said for AppZapper. Is it silly to make a ray gun sound when uninstalling an app, sure, but it makes it fun to delete unused apps, which is something a lot of people never do.
Where I think some of this software really got a bad name was so much of it becoming abandonware. TheHitList todo app was really hyped, and I got it in a software bundle (MacHeist or something), which was popular at the time. However, it seemed like once the dev had their money, they disappeared. Once burned me a couple times, I became wary of investing in any app that looked too nice…
I do miss a lot of those apps, and the hardware, of that era. It has so much charm. Great third party software devs who seemed to really have passion for what they were building, were one of the big reasons I enjoyed using OS X so much in that era, and a big reason to pay the Apple tax. I still use Transmit from Panic from time to time, and find it much more enjoyable than something like FileZilla (which was what seemed to be the standard last time I looked at other FTP apps years ago).
I wonder if formal studies exist that measure things like "discoverbility" or productivity for normal users.
No doubt aggressive skeuomorphism will be back again at some point.t
If all goes well I expect to have early version ready by middle of this year. While some features will require subscription, features not incurring ongoing costs won't. I like to think of it as an example of social software for introverts :)
I am hesitant to talk about details, but I haven't felt so excited about something in a long time.
Sustainable for who? Not for the customers...
What I discovered was:
* amazon (at the time) will aggressively shut you down by cutting off the only "viable" access to "barcode to product" data.
* barcode databases cost a lot of money and are full of utter drivel.
* people had absolutely VAST DVD/VHS porn collections that they want to share
* there is more red tape in the US then you expect. As a UK citizen I was shocked by how sclerotic any action is in the US.
* people were and now almost completely have moved to digital "stuff" although I hope that changes.
Managing dozens of subscriptions that drain money out of your wallet every month isn't sustainable for users.
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I guess not an all in one solution but lots of strong features for libraries. Readarr isn’t great if I’m honest.
But alas the revenue dried up with Delicious Library hitting the scene. It received crazy levels of press about how beautiful it was. I recall feeling at the time like they were paying the press to cover their product but knowing what I know now, I'm quite certain that was the case. The reviews never mentioned any competitors. There were several all at a cheaper prices with more tons more features.