I’ve been using Delicious Library for years to catalog my books, CDs, and DVDs/Blu-rays, as well as the electronic versions that have largely replaced them such as ebooks.

While it’s a beautifully designed app, that’s only of secondary concern to me. It does what I need it to do.

When I get a new book or Blu-ray, I can hold it up to my Mac’s camera, and Delicious Library scans the barcode then goes to Amazon to pull down the relevant data for that item. Then I can fill in the additional information that I want to keep track of, such as the price that I actually paid, where I bought it, etc.

The app has lots of ways to let me view my items; it’s a well designed app.

Three years ago the developer (he’s a solo guy, not part of a team) went to work for Apple, so I was concerned that the app might stop working, and a couple weeks ago my fears were realized.

I went to scan a barcode of my latest acquisition and I got an error message. I retried several times but to no avail. As this error occurred the first time I used the app after upgrading to the newest version of the Mac OS, I assumed it was because of some incompatibility between the app and the OS.

But nope.

It turns out that as the developer, Will Shipley, wrote on Mastodon: 

Amazon has shut off the feed that allowed Delicious Library to look up items, unfortunately limiting the app to what users already have (or enter manually).

I wasn’t contacted about this.

I’ve pulled it from the Mac App Store and shut down the website so nobody accidentally buys a non-functional app.

I don’t know why Amazon would do this, but it’s another black eye for Amazon as far as I’m concerned.

Other than the automatic lookup of items, the app still works, so I can still add new items manually. All the other functions are still there, so I expect to continue to use it, as I no longer get too many new books or Blu-rays.

But it’s one more reason that I want to cut back on my dependence on Amazon. As if I didn’t have enough reasons already.