November 10, 2004
Delicious Library

delicious library disk image

Ars Technica reviews Delicious Library:

People are right when they suspect that something very different is going on over in the Mac corner of the software development universe. Is it something crazy, or something sublime? You be the judge.

Windows users, think about what your typical download and installation experience is like. How many dialogs are you presented with? What do the file names and icons look like? Do you have to run an installer? What kind of manual clean-up is required afterwards?

Linux users, when you look at the carefully laid out disk image contents in the screenshot and links above, think about how far “desktop Linux” has to come before it can even begin to think about details like how single-icon drag-installed applications are arranged in their disk image windows.

The review completely confirmed my suspicion that I would have no use for Delicious Library, but the discussion of some of the unique aspects of the Mac community and software development were interesting.

Posted by jjwiseman at November 10, 2004 10:38 AM
Comments

Yes, it's a very pretty app. I don't have that many DVDs or CDs to catalog, but I do have lots of books, and the one application I think this might prove invaluable for is for having to make a future claim against my (can't use the word because of comment spam). My friend has already cataloged his DVD collection and found he has roughly US$8,000 invested. We've probably got at least that much in books. For that alone, I could see spending the forty.

Posted by: Zachery Bir on November 10, 2004 11:46 AM

Oh, I'm tempted; a friend of mine has been cataloguing her books and loves it. The ability to be really anal and say "bought this on this date, read it last here, loaned it over there" appeals.

Posted by: Michael Hannemann on November 10, 2004 11:57 AM

OK, I know this is somewhat off-topic, but I was just reminded of how much I hate these computers "For the rest of you."
My father in law had some photos on his Mac Laptop, in iPhoto, that he wanted us to have copies of. So I went over to try and pull them off. Geez! It took me about half an hour to try to cut through the effing metaphors. I don't want to know about "albums" or "folders" or anything! I just want to burn some damn files onto a CD for heaven's sake! But there seemed to be just no way to get the damn thing to say "here are all the jpeg files" and then take that information and use it to burn a CD.
Fine; it's great that these Mac folks have all their user-friendly metaphors, but for the sake of all that's holy, LEAVE A WAY TO CUT THROUGH THE NOISE! The damn things seem like a Fun house to me....
Sure, maybe we Linux users have a long way to go before "single-icon drag-installed applications are arranged in their disk image windows." whatever the hell THAT means, but at least we can list files, type commands to the shell and get some damn computing done!
Whew! Now I feel better!

Posted by: Robert Goldman on November 10, 2004 03:43 PM

$ find ~/Pictures/iPhoto\ Library/ -name \*.jpg -print0 | xargs -0 do_whatever

Whatever.

Posted by: Zachery Bir on November 10, 2004 07:24 PM

Robert,

As Zachery pointed out, you do have a shell.

That being said, after being indoctrinated for years by that sort of thing on Linux, it does take some time to "unlearn" all the bogus crap you have to go through to do basic things on a Linux (and maybe Windows too, I wouldn't know).

You see, in iPhoto you just make an album of the photos you want on the CD or DVD (just use the library if you just want everything) and click on the "Burn" button. That's it. There's no second step.


- ask

Posted by: Ask Bjørn Hansen on November 12, 2004 11:27 PM

Robert,

Once you think of iPhoto as being a *database* instead of a *viewer*, it all makes more sense. iPhoto is a database, and photos can be included in multiple albums, tagged with metadata, and all sorts of good stuff. But that's why you can't just say "show me the raw stuff."

(Except, of course, as ABH says, you can ask it to make a CD for you.)

Posted by: Michael Hannemann on November 13, 2004 03:27 PM

That Ars Technica review got on my "bullshit-of-the-month" list. I'm having a hard time seeing how a non-standard installation procedure is a *good* thing.

Posted by: Sunnan on November 27, 2004 11:16 AM

Your criticism of drag-and-drop installation is that it is "non-standard"? Oh man.

Posted by: John Wiseman on November 27, 2004 12:17 PM
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