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December 14, 2006
Heistilicious.
So I've never impulse bought software before. Mostly because it's kind of a hard thing to do. You can't really pick up Photoshop in the checkout line with a TV Guide and a Snickers. Not yet anyway. That said, nowadays, you can download a shareware program and pay for it within the app without even touching a web browser. Welcome to 2006, bitches.
Anyway, that's exactly what I did with Delicious Library a little over a year ago. (I guess make that 2005, bitches.) I downloaded it, played around for like 20 minutes, and then bought it. Forty bucks. Not bad. Soon after I bought it though, I started feeling impulse regret. Mostly because I was convinced Delicious Library 2.0 was right around the corner and I was going to have to drop another thirty bucks to upgrade. Fuck.
Well, here we are, more than a year later... and we're at Delicious Library 1.6. Yay hooray. At this point thirty bucks for all the new crap that's being included in 2.0 is perfectly reasonable.
Wait, there is new crap, right?
Well, I just read an interview with Wil Shipley of Delicious Monster and Omni fame on Ars. When asked about DL2 he didn't say much. In fact, from the sounds of it, all it's gonna be is a graphical overhaul accompanied by a huge speed increase and support for larger libraries. A far cry from the in 2.0 "we're going to flip a switch in the next version and it will turn into social software" remark he made during a Wired interview almost two years ago. (That said, I'm all for a speed increase. Fuck new features, I just want the damn thing to work.)
There was one enlightening part of the interview, though. Ars asks Wil what he thinks of MacHeist, a site that takes a bunch of small Mac apps and bundles them together at a deep discount. (The current offer is insane, $49 for 10 great apps... bear in mind Delicious Library is $40 on its own.) Anyway, MacHeist has gotten some negative press lately for supposedly taking advantage of independent Mac developers. (That link leads to Gus Mueller who everyone seems to be linking to for some negative MacHeist spin, but but per usual, for the fairest commentary, talk to Gruber.)
ANYway, in his Ars interview Shipley says all there needs to be said about this, no need to read anything else on the subject: "None of us who are bundled with MacHeist were forced to do so; we knew ahead of time what the price would be and how much we'd get." Bam, case closed.
More people need to take a tip from Wil. Both in the world of Macintosh software, but also in the world in general. Quit bitching. If you don't like it, don't buy it. Don't participate. No one is making you buy or sell or anything. Like dad always said: vote with your wallet.
Posted by pat at December 14, 2006 11:41 PM