“Over the next couple weeks there are going to be some major changes in my life. I am moving to down to Cupertino, CA where I will be designing user interfaces and drawing icons for Mac OS X at Apple,” nineteen-year-old user interface designer and Delicious Monster co-founder Mike Matas reports in his blog.
“Unfortunately this means I will be leaving Delicious Monster, the software company I founded with Wil Shipley about a year ago. Our first product Delicious Library has been a runaway success and it has a great future ahead. I have created detailed designs for version 2.0 that [co-founder Wil Shipley] will be working off as he completes this incredible release,” Matas writes.
Full article here.
Good luck to Mike!!
And he never even went to college! Sometimes I wonder what I’m doing there myself.
MW: suddenly
My first thought was “how cool, ohh nooo!!!” I love Delicious Library and have high hopes for its future. But I’m certain whatever he works on for Apple will be just as well designed, and hopefully equally of benefit to me. Good luck Mike.
I read this over at MacCentral. Can someone explain Delicious Monster to me in a nutshell?
>I read this over at MacCentral. Can someone explain Delicious Monster to me in a nutshell?>
Yeah!
http://www.delicious-monster.com/
It has the ability to catalogue your books, movies, games and music. Big deal, right? Well, the cool thing is, it uses your iSight (or other FW camera) as a bar code reader. It does a lot more, but you can check it out at their website
On top of everything, it’s a wonderful design, which Apple apparently recognizes. IIRC, Matas first developped this when he was a wee lad, back when it was called Chronopath Library. Quite a success tale for a young guy who deserves mad props for his skills.
Contrast the Mike Matas’ story to Nick Ciarelli’s, who started stealing company secrets from Apple as a young boy, and now at 19 or 20 is being sued by Apple. Just goes to show how far BEING smart will take you, as opposed to believing you’re smart.
I get the feeling he will be running Apple in about 20-25 years.
This guy was also the one that blogged about how to make that awesome ilife poster with iphoto. Nice icons too.
Doesn’t this mean the end to Delicious Library?
Apple will essentially incorporate the features into their next version of iTunes which will store catalogue music and video.
AL,
That is sort of the way I read it too… and having never heard of DM – my first instinct when I saw it this morning was – theres the next step in iVideo or whatever Apple is deveolping with their iTunes movie distribution.
from reading the kids comments on DM – he seems amazingly insightful for his age. scarily so.
I hope when my kids are that age, they have half that confidence.
Mike is so amazing! I think we’re gonna see him rise to the top at Apple some day.
Congrats, dude!
Funny thing is – you never hear about folks bragging on their blogs about going to work for microsoft!
“Dude – I’m gonna go design some icons for Longhorn!”
hehe
Yeah, that guy is gonna go places. We’ll all benefit from his work.
I’m hoping that in addition to working on Mac OSX, he could add some zest to the Apple site. His website is quite possibly the best one I’ve seen in a long time…ah hell, it’s probably the best one I’ve ever seen. Simple, elegant, informative, and easy to use/navigate. Not too much, not too little. It’s like he’s been working for Apple all along.
Icons are kinda cute on the site, but the design is pretty bad.
Also I got this message: “Internet Explorer can make your computer unsafe” and how IE is not compatible with their site.
1) They’re thinking of the Windows version as unsafe, aned I’m using the Mac version.
2) What business is it of theirs if people are using “unsafe” browsers? They need to get over themselves.
3) They must be very proud of themselves for eliminating over 80% of potential visitors to their site.
I hope Apple is only interested in this guy for icon design and not web design.
Using Internet Exploder on a Mac is high treason. Off with his head.
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“2) What business is it of theirs if people are using “unsafe” browsers? They need to get over themselves.”
Hmmm, remind me what you say the next time I buy something online. What business do sites like Amazon have for insisting people use browsers that support secure transactions?
NewType, that’s a specious argument. I don’t care what Delicious does, just not interested. If you want to do transactions or internet banking, then yes, you have to use IE or Netscape. But if a website is unfriendly to your preferred browser, screw them, go to a different site.
I haven’t found any way to make animated ads stop completely in Safari or Firefox. Easy to do in IE and iCab, which is my real favorite.
I thought their site was horribly designed, very difficult to make out what they’re about. Solid color background is a real no-no in web design.
I bought Delicious Library a couple of weeks ago and I’ve become obsessed with cataloging my books, videos and music. When I ran out of movie dvd’s and vhs tapes, I started recording movies from television so I would have more video to list. When I finished entering my cd’s I needed more music to enter so I began listing my iTunes albums – next I will venture into the basement to inventory my old vinyl collection – I still have hundreds of books to catalog so I’m feeling pretty good for the time being.
I hope this young man isn’t making a mistake tying the ol’ apple and chain around his ankle. And I hope Delicious Monster perseveres and keeps improving the Delicious Library – I MUST list and sort and catalog. I must.
neomonkey said:
“They must be very proud of themselves for eliminating over 80% of potential visitors to their site.”
Reason: Most of those 80%+ of people are on Windows. Delicious Monster only makes Mac software. They can safely rule most of the Windows IE users out of being potential customers, because as we all know, only 5% of the world uses Macs, if that. Most Windows IE users simply aren’t going to be Mac owners. They also want to point out that IE for OS X is a steaming pile of a browser, and free, superior alternatives exist. Call it web evangelism if you like, but I agree with their point – you need a severely good reason to be using IE on any computer right now, let alone OS X.
I heard about this yesterday in DrunkenBlog’s EXCELLENT interview with Wil Shipley, co-founder of the Omni Group and Delicious Monster. Wil mentioned that Mike Matas was leaving Delicious Monster, but was reticent about which company had hired him. An update at the end of the interview confirmed that he had gone over to Apple. I strongly suggest that anyone interested in Omni Group or Delicious Monster, indeed in OS X software, read this wonderful interview with a thoroughly fascinating guy.
neomonkey,
I’m baffled by your animosity. Internet Explorer is only a browser, and a damned poor one at that. Why are you so faithful to it? Me, if a piece of software doesn’t work properly, I find an alternative. It’s not as if you don’t have any. Why are you so angry because they refuse to play nice with a browser that’s notorious for flouting Web standards?
And as for “eliminating over 80% of potential visitors to their site”, I take it that you’re referring to Windows users, as I don’t believe for one minute that over 80% of OS X users have IE as their primary browser. And no, they really don’t give a damn if Windows users can’t use their site properly; they don’t produce Windows software.
you need a severely good reason to be using IE on any computer right now, let alone OS X
I already gave my reasons for sometimes usage of IE. Are you understanding impaired? I mainly use iCab, which is largley overlooked for some strange reason. I suppose you don’t mind the supremely annoying animated ads, but I will not tolerate them or any browser that makes it difficult or impossible to turn them off.
neomonkey,
I just took a look at the Delicious Monster website with Internet Explorer on my Mac. It was a hideous mess. If you could suspend your aversion to animated adds for just 30 seconds and open it up with Safari you would see a very handsomely designed and well laid out site. The site uses a very mild and tasteful animation and does not contain any animated ads whatsoever, so why not have a look. You already seem to have admitted you prefer iCab but will resort to IE for banking purposes, so you are currently compromising your taste in browsers for some purposes anyway.
BTW, the site looks much better in iCab than in IE even though some text is unreadable.
I bet we’ll see Mike’s work on Apple’s Video Store.