Bruji

Just started using CDpedia and have read a lot on this forum. It looks to me that CDpedia is much less used than the other two pedia's
What will be the future of this very nice app? importing my whole cd collection (over 2000) takes a lot of time and work, i'm gonna depend on this if i do so! I set up a database in AppleWorks some years ago and fear i have to give this up (what's the future of AppleWorks?)

Isn't it more logic to have one big 'MediaPedia' for all format's. Maybe it's more expensive then, specially if you're using only one option like i am but I would want to pay for that too -don't have many dvd's but can start anyway- I have a lot of books but now i don't feel the need to catalogue them.
Hope CDpedia stays forever!

We already had this idea several times:
http://www.bruji.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=348

You can be sure that each of the apps has a great future

Fabian

I believe AppleWorks will be no longer with iWork; with Keynote and Pages all they need now is a spreadsheet application. You are right that CDpedia is the least used, a lot of people have left CD behind completely for MP3s and the digital age of music and iTunes is all they need. Nevertheless, we do plan to continue to upgrade all our apps. Will be bringing the 2.0 update to Bookpedia and then CDpedia. (Especially the new Amazon ECS 4.0 makes a difference.) We go with DVDpedia first because of the larger user base, it allows more people to benefit first and also for us to be be able to tweak the update with more feedback from users. Especially with a x.0 update, the tweaking involves a lot of speed improvements. The pedias are already fast, but I am a believer of first implementing a feature and once you have it working you optimize it.

We get request for a monolithic application that will do all media, and also many compliments on having separate applications as it allows users to buy what they need. The reason for the three separate apps is each one performs its tasks well. With all-in-one app, you have to make sacrifices. It is also overwhelming for the user. Imagine the possible list of columns in all-in-one app from the pedias united, it be about 60 different options. To handle this you have to start getting generic and it renders the app useless to a true DVDphile, Audiophile or Book worm. Try out some of our competition and it becomes clear what I am talking about, fewer columns, simplified commands, generic views. In Bookpedia the copy command creates a MLA bibliography of the selected books as plain text to allow you to paste it to an email or a term paper. It can do this because the task of Bookpedia is clear, it's to handle books. Of course a smart well designed app could overcome many of the difficulties by presenting you windows for books when a book is selected and a window for DVDs. But what do you do when the selection is a mixture of entries and the user wants to edit all of them at once? Again your forced to go with a generic window. Creating a good all-in-one app is a challenge we might take on down the road, but for now we want to make the pedia bundle the best apps they can be.

I know this was a longer response than you bargain for and I apologize for that. I also understand the time involved in committing to a new collection management system and importing your collection. That why the pedias have an excellent export options; XML file with embedded image information, tab and coma delimited files, and a very flexible template export that can export pretty much in any format. Your database is also kept in human readable XML format. All this is so that it easier for our costumers to move their data around and manipulate it. We hope that you will be with the pedias forever, but we are not going to lock you out of your data as a way to keep you using the pedias. So you can sleep well knowing that when you want to move your data, that you spent so much time on, the pedias will make it a easy. Where you take it from there, you are on your own.

Regards,
Conor.

P.S. You can view the summary in the drawer instead of the tracks by clicking on the three little bars icon. (They use the same scrollable view as summary and tracks tend to be information heavy.)

Thanks for all the answers. I'm reassured.

Also thanks for the answer about the drawer (my question about this was in my other post!) Feel a little bit stupid that, after importing 250 cd's, I still didn't notice that clicking on the 3 stripes toggles between 'tracks' and 'summary'.

i have another question I'm not gonna ask here, but first I'm going to VersionTracker to rate CDpedia, hope it will contribute to it.

Nora wrote:I believe AppleWorks will be no longer with iWork; with Keynote and Pages all they need now is a spreadsheet application. You are right that CDpedia is the least used, a lot of people have left CD behind completely for MP3s and the digital age of music and iTunes is all they need. ...

We get request for a monolithic application that will do all media, and also many compliments on having separate applications as it allows users to buy what they need. The reason for the three separate apps is each one performs its tasks well. ...

A few comments -- Apple can't kill AppleWorks without producing a successor: iWorks is not a free app, and they do need to keep providing consumer grade word processing, etc. for iBook/iMac/Mini buyers. So if not AppleWorks, something simillar should always exist.

Yes, a lot of people plunge into DVD Pedia first, because they are currently buying a lot more DVDs then CDs, & because they lend DVDs but not CDs. However, I think most of us have CD (or other formats of music) collections that are every bit as big as their DVD collection and just as necessary to properly catalog. So I think it will get a lot more use in the future.

Lastly, I totally agree that seperate apps are better, for the reasons you state. However, I'm certainly looking forward to BookPedia & CDPedia catching up in features to the DVD version.

Ted