MyAnimeList clients are at their infancy. Before the API came out, MAL Updater was your only choice and it only worked on Windows. The problem is that not everyone used Windows and used different OSes. MyAnimeList is a staple for most anime viewers and bloggers out there who use it to keep track what they are watching.
If you recall a few months ago, I have complained there was a lack of a MyAnimeList Client for Mac OS X. I haven’t checked hard enough and there was a program called iMAL that allows you to update MAL… The only problem is the program is very unstable and every time I tried to use it, it crashes on me… and I even recompile it and it’s even more unstable. Another alternative is AniChou, which is open sourced. The only problem there is the interface looks like crap (except in Liunx) and it was difficult to install since I have to install additional packages to make it work on Mac OS X. With that, MAL Updater has way too much features, the interface is cluttered and it’s closed sourced, which isn’t good. However, there was light at the end of the tunnel. Unofficial MAL API made this possible since the APIs are alot easier to use than the official API and they are planning to add Manga support right after they made some fixes to some search bugs…
After I complained about not being a really good MyAnimeList client for Mac OS X and discovering a easier API to use, I went to work and created this. I used RealBasic 2009 to create this client and wanted to make as close to a Mac experience as possible without having to learn Objective-C and Cocoa (and I don’t want to spend time trying to fix memory leaks). I was able to at least get the most basic features to work after three days of programming (you can check out some of the early screenshots I made of the program in early development). It took that long since RealBasic was a little different from Visual Basic .net and I haven’t worked on that stuff ever since I switched to a Mac in late 2006. Just within a week, I added status updating with 2.x and you could add new titles to the list, update them or even delete them for the list.
However, by the time I have used melative for my live micro-blogging when I go and watch some episodes of Anime… so guess what, I have decided to add melative support to MAL Client OS X since media is all about experience. MAL lacks the ability to express what you want to say about a episode you are watching. This reduces the need to update both melative and MAL separately, when you can do it the same time. If you have nothing to say when you go update, it will just sync the information you updated on MAL to your melative library.
The reason I didn’t add any additional features like auto-sorting of media files and skinning support since it’s unnecessary. Most people would use AnimeSuki, IRC, or even licensed retail discs anyways, so I don’t see the point of MAL Client OS X do the work since you have it done already. Skinning support is a niche feature, especially on Mac OS X and Linux. Rarely, you will see any skinned programs on those platforms and it’s too Windows-like and make things more complicated. MAL Client OS X is all about simplicity and not all about features. Having a lot of features in the world don’t make your program any better if the implementation sucks and not easy to use. This is the reason I created MAL Lite, a simple, lightweight, minimalist client for Windows and Linux as an alternative. Along with it, I made a GUI for MAL Updater OS X scripts so it will be a lot friendlier and people can scrobble their anime while they are watching it.
There is a reason I used RealBasic over Adobe AIR. For one, RealBasic can make native apps and uses less RAM as a result. Adobe Air, on the other hand is notorious for using a lot of RAM and is not native. Also, I can access the OS features with RealBasic and do a lot more than I could in AIR…
The future… Once manga support gets added, I will start working on adding it to the program. Hopefully, the program will hit the final stages with version 1.0, and by then, RealBasic 2010 will be out with Cocoa support…