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Did Napster have many competitors at the time?
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Kaazaa, emule, dc++
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Those came one or more years after Napster, when it was already wildly popular because it was the only tool that did that job.

Like calibre, I guess :)

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> Frankly? Who care.

Lots of people. It’s great that you don’t, really, but Calibre is very ugly¹ and I have no doubt that limits its adoption. Subconsciously, people associate ugly apps with unpolished or unfinished apps.

I don’t use Calibre (I rely instead on command-line and bespoke tools) but I do recommend it to less technical people and I always make it a point of saying “it’s very ugly but it does everything and does it correctly, it’s the gold standard for what you want to do” because I’m pretty sure if I didn’t add that disclaimer the people I recommend it to would think they downloaded the wrong thing or abandon it as soon they opened it.

¹ That’s just personal opinion, we don’t need to have a debate about that. If you find Calibre beautiful, more power to you.

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“I manage my Kindle reading list with home-made command line tools” is a very niche situation.

I’m impressed but also… that’s a lot of effort.

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