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You are here: MacNN Forums > Our Archives > General Archives > Delicious Monster > Interesting Ars Technica article on DL2

 
Interesting Ars Technica article on DL2
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cchris
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Jun 24, 2008, 10:04 PM
 
Do not adjust your browser: Delicious Library 2 is out

After a year of hype, feature previews, leaked screenshots and details, Delicious Monster is finally shipping Delicious Library 2, its (in)famous media cataloging app for Mac OS X. The new version may indeed require Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, but if you're a fan of keeping track of your real world stuff on your Mac, you'll understand why
The comments after the article are interesting, too.
You can be honorable or you can make money.
--slogan of The Delicious Generation
     
turtle777
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Jun 24, 2008, 10:18 PM
 
Originally Posted by cchris View Post
The comments after the article are interesting, too.
How that ?

All of these things have been mentioned here in the forum as well.

-t
     
cchris  (op)
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Jun 24, 2008, 11:03 PM
 
Originally Posted by turtle777 View Post
How that ?

All of these things have been mentioned here in the forum as well.

-t
It was interesting how many commenters complained about DL2 being too buggy to release. I'm fascinated by the decision making that went into releasing DL2 in its current condition. Wil Shipley, self-described obsessive-compulsive programmer, has a rep for elegant programming. But DL2 can't be described as "elegant", it's more a disappointment and test of patience for people who've paid for the privilege. So why did the guy who chided Palm:

This is always a bad sign for a company. I'm like: Hey, here's an idea... spend your time and money making your products not suck. Nobody gives a crap if you're called Palm or PalmOne or Pam or Spam. Your asset isn't your name, you dickweeds, it's your reputation for having a cool device, which you are destroying by having the device not be cool any more.
...Rush DL2 to market, especially after such a long delay while it was in development? I mean, a year or so late, what would another six months have mattered to ensure a good user experience? Heck, beta only lasted a few months and DL2 was out the door right after that.

It wasn't the money, Wil has said on this forum that he's well-off, he even donates profit to charity.

So it's a curious thing.
You can be honorable or you can make money.
--slogan of The Delicious Generation
     
illitrate
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Jun 25, 2008, 02:07 AM
 
Originally Posted by cchris View Post
So it's a curious thing.
not that curious - it's our (collective) own fault
people on this forum spent the last half of 2007 getting increasingly noisy/angry/sarcastic/militant about how long it was taking to release the code
it was pretty much a case of damned if you do damned if you don't
i think i recall several posts along the lines of "whatever state it's in, it should be released"
and now that Delicious Monster have listened to their customers and put of a release of the app, we're all slagging them off again for doing what we asked (that's we as in this forum collectively, not necessarily you and me specifically)

to be honest, i'm impressed Will has the patience he has with us - i'd have lost it long ago, said **** you all, ditched the project and gone to work on something totally different.
-- ---
"one day we're all gonna die and then we'll see who's laughing"
     
cchris  (op)
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Jun 25, 2008, 08:55 AM
 
I don't remember everyone being so viciously opinionated here that it would have forced Wil's hand, opinions on when DL2 should be released followed the bell curve: most wondered at the delay but were content to wait, a few said Wil should hold off until DL2 was perfect, and a few demanded that he give it to us "as is".

But you're saying he threw up his hands in frustration and dumped DL2 on us because of a few outlier comments? Talk about blaming the victim!

Anyway, by extending the beta testing he could have given the extremists at both ends what they wanted: DL2 as a work-in-progress, and eventually a polished DL2 for the rest of us.
You can be honorable or you can make money.
--slogan of The Delicious Generation
     
CaptainHaddock
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Jun 26, 2008, 05:06 AM
 
I don't think it was the forum's fault. If you've followed the various DL blogs, you know that all DL's talented programmers (aside from Wil) have left over the past year or so without being replaced, and Wil (from what I hear) is generally busy with a lot of things besides DL. There are dozens of bugs, some of them no-doubt difficult to fix, and one guy doing it all might not be enough. A small team (like Panic has) could probably have shipped a finished product a lot sooner.
     
Horsepoo!!!
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Jun 26, 2008, 08:13 AM
 
Originally Posted by illitrate View Post
not that curious - it's our (collective) own fault
people on this forum spent the last half of 2007 getting increasingly noisy/angry/sarcastic/militant about how long it was taking to release the code
it was pretty much a case of damned if you do damned if you don't
i think i recall several posts along the lines of "whatever state it's in, it should be released"
and now that Delicious Monster have listened to their customers and put of a release of the app, we're all slagging them off again for doing what we asked (that's we as in this forum collectively, not necessarily you and me specifically)

to be honest, i'm impressed Will has the patience he has with us - i'd have lost it long ago, said **** you all, ditched the project and gone to work on something totally different.
Get...out!
     
cchris  (op)
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Jun 26, 2008, 12:14 PM
 
Originally Posted by CaptainHaddock View Post
I don't think it was the forum's fault. If you've followed the various DL blogs, you know that all DL's talented programmers (aside from Wil) have left over the past year or so without being replaced, and Wil (from what I hear) is generally busy with a lot of things besides DL. There are dozens of bugs, some of them no-doubt difficult to fix, and one guy doing it all might not be enough. A small team (like Panic has) could probably have shipped a finished product a lot sooner.
So what's with releasing DL2 in its bug-ridden state? Keeping with the theme of this thread, there's another interesting article, this time by Paul at Rogue Amoeba about "The Delicious Generation." This bit from the closing 'graph says it all:

I'll close with a quote I heard from a member of the Delicious Generation who shall go unnamed. He said, "You can be honorable, or you can make money". I shot back "You can do both!", and I firmly believe it.
"You can be honorable, or you can make money" seems to have been the choice when it came to releasing DL2. I'd love to be wrong on this and learn that somehow it really was "you can do both". But as I struggle to get DL2 to do searches like DL1 did, resize cover art to be properly visible in the covers like DL1 did automatically, try to guess which acronym (and the proper letter case) I have to use to get items to assume the proper shape, and gaze in disbelieving wonder at the DL1 Help that's still all the help there is for DL2, it sure doesn't look like it!
( Last edited by cchris; Jul 5, 2008 at 09:35 AM. )
You can be honorable or you can make money.
--slogan of The Delicious Generation
     
cchris  (op)
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Jun 26, 2008, 11:10 PM
 
Well, that clears that up!

If, like me, you've been wondering why the sudden rush to distribute DL2 even though it's double-plus unready, this appears to be the answer from Wil:

Ok, well, actually Delicious Library 2 shipped like four weeks ago. Sorry I didn't tell you. It's not because I don't care. Honestly, I tried to tell the press, but I think they're pretty sick of me, so there wasn't much of a splash on the news sites.

Sales have been great, though, so I can't complain.

...
Oh, also, I launched a new company down at WWDC last week, called Golden % Braeburn. I'm going to license out the store I wrote to sell Delicious Library, since it was a huge pain in the tush to write, and I actually would have licensed a store from someone else if there'd been a decent option back when we launched Delicious Monster.
Unwrap the enigma, pry open the mystery, and find that DL2 was tossed off so people could marvel at the next big thing! Je me sens tellement spéciale!

It's funny, I'd forgotten until reading the hype for Golden%Braeburn, that DL1 won an Apple Design Award for “Best User Experience” in 2005, pretty chuckalicious when you think about it. Like they say on Wall Street: "past performance does not necessarily predict future results."
You can be honorable or you can make money.
--slogan of The Delicious Generation
     
ajmas
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Jun 27, 2008, 08:58 AM
 
Writing software is no easy task and can be compared to trying to rebuild a whole city. Sure on the whole it probably does what you expect and behaves well, but as the complexity increases it becomes harder to be able to find every issue. The more people that play with the tool there more likely issues will be found. Fixing bugs can also be delicate since fixing one can introduce another, especially if reveals a design issue.

If you have any experience with hardware or software then you know that until you seed the next increment there are likely to be issues. While it would be nice that reality was otherwise, experience shows that this is the way things are.

If you are reporting a bug, then I recommend you provide as much information as possible. Saying "it doesn't work" is treating the development team as level 20 mages, but in reality developers rarely pass level 1 - I haven't seen any pixies incanted yet If the program crashes, then copy the text in the bug report and submit it to Delicious Monster, since only Apple receives the crash report otherwise.
     
cchris  (op)
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Jul 5, 2008, 10:14 AM
 
Originally Posted by ajmas View Post
Writing software is no easy task and can be compared to trying to rebuild a whole city. Sure on the whole it probably does what you expect and behaves well, but as the complexity increases it becomes harder to be able to find every issue. The more people that play with the tool there more likely issues will be found. Fixing bugs can also be delicate since fixing one can introduce another, especially if reveals a design issue.
You've just described what is known as beta testing, which is where DL2 should still be. But if it was, there wouldn't be anything new to sell at the Delicious Library store, so Wil wouldn't be able to showcase his Golden%Braeburn company. It's a clever way to make money: sell DL2 as-is while using the store that sells it to make even more cash. Wil wins, people who license Golden%Braeburn win, and people who only need DL2 for small collections win. It's just people like me, who bought DL2 thinking it would work at least as well as DL1, who feel abused.
( Last edited by cchris; Jul 5, 2008 at 12:09 PM. )
You can be honorable or you can make money.
--slogan of The Delicious Generation
     
 
   
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