[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by emmgee

I'm not qualified to comment on whether Finder and the Kindle app are "very poorly designed", but I'll stick my neck out and say that neither are "random".

AFAIK Finder is doing nothing wrong, it is simply obeying Apple's filesystem hierarchy. Perhaps Kovid dislikes it for other reasons -- I don't touch Mac so I wouldn't know the difference.
I will happily agree that Kindle for Mac/PC is both poorly designed and random.

I would also say that an application that is a manager of digital books would by necessity need to accommodate the Kindle app – and an application that runs on a Mac would by necessity need to accommodate Finder.

And what exactly do you expect calibre to do about it?

You stated two problems:

1. Kindle for Mac stores downloaded files in a folder that Apple treats as hidden.
2. Kindle for Mac stores downloaded files with obfuscated filenames (actually, it is the Amazon product ID not that that is helpful).

Both of those are the responsibility of Amazon to fix. Once again, there is nothing calibre can do about it.

Lastly I will say, with respect, that Calibre is very complex and could be much more simple and achieve many of its design goals. That comment will may mean I won't get much more help in this forum but that's my opinion.

calibre is complex because it does many things in one application bundle. If you intend to claim that those things can be accomplished in a simpler way, I won't argue with you -- as long as you can provide solid reasoning and details. It is very easy to cast vague aspersions, and I suspect you are just casting vague aspersions.

By all means, prove me wrong. Bring on the details.

Note: "achieve many of its design goals" is not an option. "achieve all of its design goals" is a hard requirement... on account of that is the point of a design goal.