Delicious Library

Come for the Hardware, stay for the Software.

This month Delicious Library, a hugely influential app for the Mac, for the indie developer community, and for my own story in particular, was finally shut down leading to many people sharing nice memories and reactions on what the Delicious Library meant, and I thought I should write a few words about it as well.

What drew me to the Mac initially was its industrial design. My uncle had an iMac G4, the floating screen, the swivelling arm – the one that looked like a lamp – and I thought it was a beautiful piece of art. What kept me on the Mac though was the software, the software from third party independent ‘indie’ developers.

These apps were made by small teams, individuals even, hand-crafted with a focus on the the beauty and the little details. They were dubbed by some the “delicious generation”, named after the forerunner of this trend, the aforementioned Delicious Library. When I finally saved up enough to get my own Mac I was hooked as well. I didn’t have enough books worth cataloguing in Delicious Library and I didn’t really have anything to outline in OmniOutliner, but I played with them endlessly but absorbed everything I could about them. Eventually I started dabbling in programming myself and from that point I knew what I wanted. I wanted to become an indie Mac developer and write apps like Delicious Library myself.

One day I remember reading about Delicious Library on what I think was Apple’s developer website, where they interviewed the developer, Wil Shipley, who talked about the App’s design, marketing and yes, how the app had made €250.000 dollar in its first month – a very large sum I thought, but more specifically; it was proof that this could be done and could be more than a hobby. I remember this because I showed this to my parents, who at the time were a bit skeptical of what what I wanted to do: you want to write software for this Mac platform that nobody uses? And sell it for a living? And sell it online? Who has a Mac again? Who buys software? Who buys anything online? (Remember this was ~20 years ago.)

But now I had proof that it was possible. That realisation, that it was possible to build apps like this for a living while also focussing on beautiful design, user experience and customer delight was what motivated me in my own way to start building apps. Making a living selling software online could be done, and Delicious Library had shown the way and provided the inspiration. First with Fontcase and then Sketch, both of which I’m proud to say have won an Apple design award as Mac-assed Mac apps. But it started there, 20 years ago with Delicious Library. And for that I will forever be incredibly grateful. So long, and thanks for all the inspiration.