John Siracusa’s Review of Delicious Library 1.0

John Siracusa, in his inimitable style, reviewed Delicious Library 1.0 upon its release, 20 years ago this month:

Part of what makes the Mac community so special is that so many Mac developers have itches — and, more importantly, corresponding talents — that have little or nothing to do with computers. I invite you to look again at some of the screenshots and artwork in this application. Someone loved those graphics. Someone sweated over every pixel of that application window. Someone knows what it means to be a lover of art, music, books, video games. This is in addition to (not instead of) the ability to write great code.

All of these human facilities and experiences have been harnessed to create not just a mere “program”, “application” or (God forbid) “executable”, but a digital love letter to collectors. Delicious Monster, from its products to its web site, exudes a spirit of passion and fun. “I’ve never been happier at work”, Wil Shipley told me in an email. “I think it shows in the finished product.”

I think so too. It may only be version 1.0, but it’s delicious.

Re-reading this review — which I first linked to, with little comment, upon publication — reminded me of several things. First, Siracusa is one of the few writers I’ve ever felt competitive with in this racket. This whole thing is so fucking good, and touches upon so many subtle points that are so hard to convey in words. (In some ways it’s better to read in its original multi-page layout, via Internet Archive, but those archived versions are inexplicably missing some, but not all, of the screenshots, and for a review of an app as visually ambitious as Delicious Library, the screenshots are essential. But the current Ars Technica version of the review, although it has all the inline images, is missing this “larger version” of Delicious Library’s main window. Open the version I’m hosting in a tab for reference. Note too that “larger version” meant something different 20 years ago — it’s only 183 KB, but is the largest image in the review.)

Second, I had forgotten just how ambitious Delicious Library 1.0 was, right out of the gate. I remembered that Delicious Library eventually supported barcode scanning via webcams, but that feature was in fact present in version 1.0. It worked incredibly well. And the feature was so far ahead of its time. In 2004, no Mac had yet shipped with a built-in camera. Instead, we all bought Apple’s standalone $150 iSight camera, which connected via FireWire. (What a gorgeous device.) By the end of his effusive review, Siracusa (unsurprisingly) has a wishlist of additional features, but what was in Delicious Library 1.0 comprised far more than a “minimal viable product”. It exemplified Apple’s — and Steve Jobs’s — own ethos of debuting with a bang, right out of the gate. It made you say “Wow!” And then you’d think, “Oh, but it’d be cool if it...” and, it turns out, it did that too.

Delicious indeed.

★ Wednesday, 27 November 2024