Why I'm abandoning CDpedia after 5 years

[chinarider]

This is going to sound like I’m a CDpedia hater. I’m not. It’s a nice little program and a bargain at $18. But here’s why I’m bailing on it after 5 years of use.

1. No iPhone app. For DVD’s I use DVD Hunter because it’s free and has a free (and excellent) iPhone app. You’ve been promising one for a while but still nothing. I have over 10,000 CD’s in CDpedia and I have to carry around a huge printed book whenever I go to record shows or flea markets to double check what I already have. I don’t care about Amazon syncing - I just want an app that syncs to CDpedia so I can always have an up-to-date and easy to search listing of my collection on my iPod Touch.

2. Box set support. This topic has been brought up many times over the years in the forum and still nothing. Your response is always “we’re not sure how to implement it, but we’re working on it”. If you can’t come up with a solution in 5 years I have to assume you never will.

3. Playing iTunes tracks directly from CDpedia doesn’t work. It plays “a” track of the same name by the correct artist, but not the correct track. For example, if I play “Thunder Road” from the Bruce Springsteen Live album, it will likely play the studio version of Thunder Road from Born To Run. I brought up this problem 3 or 4 years ago in the forum and you acknowledged the problem and said the iTunes interaction is difficult, but you’d work on it. Still no fix, and again I assume there never will be. I have over 100 versions of Dark Star by the Grateful Dead and it would be cool to compare them from within CDpedia in order to make notes. I think you should at least put an asterisk on your web page where you tout this as a feature and let customers know it doesn’t work with multiple versions of the same song.

4. Info view templates. There haven’t been any new styles in many years. Of the few I have to choose from only 1 is usable for my purposes and although it’s boring and ugly I’ve made due for years. Your advice (as is often your advice) is to just open up the template and change it myself. Don’t know how - not interested in learning HTML.

There are so many things to love about CDpedia, and it’s going to take me months, if not years to transfer my collection with all the links and all the artwork and all detailed info in 40+ fields, but I’m tired of waiting for CDpedia to make any real improvements.

Good luck in the future and (despite all my above comments) thanks for all the support in the past.

Dave

[FineWine]

I do not personally have CDpedia (only DVDpedia and Bookpedia) but I can comment on your Points 1 & 4.

1 - The iPhone App - Pocketpedia3 - is in Beta testing right now - I am one of the testers and it is a great App. Two of the reasons it has taken so long: is Apples strict compliance regulations and more importantly, is that Conor and Nora want to get this App "RIGHT" from the start as each submission to Apple can be a lengthy process and besides who wants a 'half-arsed' App anyway.

4 - You are lucky that in these programs you have a choice, not all programs do. If you do not want to write your own Info Templates, then how about asking nicely in these forums if someone would write one for you. Just explain the layout, the info you would like to have and even the colours and fonts you would like to use. Then after it has been perfected to the way you would like, then the author could submit it for approval within the Extras page so everybody could partake in your design sensibilities..

As for your final comment about taking months, if not years to transfer your data base; then all I can say is that your new catalog program isn't all that great as the pedia's do make it quite easy to export it's database. But, then, quite possibly that even this function is not 100% to your likening as well.

[Nora]

Of course we're sad to see you go Dave but let me address a few of your points:

1. Unfortunately we couldn't do much about our iPhone app with Amazon still in the picture since synching their data (anything, even just a title) to a mobile device is forbidden under their terms of service. And they made it very clear, twice, that they take this seriously when we had to remove Pocketpedia from the App Store. Now that Amazon has been made only an option in version 5 we're hoping that Pocketpedia3 (in beta testing as FineWine pointed out) will be able to stay in the App Store for good.

2. We'd love to include box set support, if we could come up with a good way to actually implement it. This has been discussed on the forum before. If you have a good solution, we're all ears!

3. That is something we haven't gotten right yet, you're correct. It's still on our list to do and someday Conor will give it his undivided attention but he is still the only programmer here at Bruji and there are only so many hours in the day.

4. As FineWine already said - there might be other Pedia users who have the time and inclination to help you put together a new info view template. There are also different ones available on our Extras page, written by other users.

We wish you the best of luck with the new program and thank you for supporting CDpedia.

[jeremybingaman]

...Pocketpedia3 (in beta testing as FineWine pointed out) will be able to stay in the App Store for good.

Is there a way to be added to the beta testers list? I still have the old Pocketpedia on my phone and love it. I was sad to see it was gone from the app store, but would love to test the new version!

[Nora]

Sorry, the beta tester list is full now. (Unfortunately the spots are limited by the iOS setup.) But thanks for offering to help!