QuickVerse for Mac

I’ve been putting this off for a while. While I like bibles, and I like the Mac, QuickVerse for Mac is a major disappointment to me.

First, the good. There’s a lot of content here. A lot of it. You can synchronize your view into different books, and you can look up Greek and Hebrew words.

But it’s got a lot of bad to it, too.

Right from the start, the installer didn’t work. As part of its postflight, it calls into the software to build some indexes. That command line tool crashes, leaving you unable to access any resources. I did find a workaround; the installer is actually a multipackage installer, and I installed the packages one at a time and upgraded to QuickVerse 1.2 before installing the package that included the postflight. Support never did solve this, but I was able to solve it myself. A painful experience, to be sure.

On a check list somewhere, the UI would seem very Mac-like, but it seems to emphasize using the latest Mac features over usability. Polished metal, slide drawers, customizable toolbars abound. But the main interface is an awkward polished metal console window, rather than a view into content.

The search is a full tab with a bunch of settings on it and a slide out drawer showing (sometimes) the context of the selected found result. I say sometimes because sometimes the result will be several screens away.

You can search for words or reference, but you need to click a radio button to switch between the modes. Apparently the writers couldn’t find a way to distinguish between, say, heaven and Hebrews 3:1. Keyboard shortcuts are almost nonexistent.

Next, while it contains a lot of resources, it does not include the Amplified bible. I knew this when I purchased it, of course, but I didn’t realize how much I would miss it.

The awkward navigation and searching combine with the lack of an Amplified version to really turn me off of this product. I usually end up using biblegateway.com or crosswalk.com’s interlinear bible. I think QuickVerse for Mac convinced me (more than anything else) that web applications can be useful after all, although it’s taken me a few months to realize this.