For a while I have been looking for two different apps: one to manage my recipes on my MacBook, and one to manage my DVD library on my iPhone. So after trying, buying and deleting some I'm gonna present you my findings to save you some time.

Recipe App

You know the problem: you have tons of recipes - everywhere. In books, magazines, online, in your grandma's paper collection (handwritten and unreadable) and files scattered around your harddrive. You have a recipe for everything and no chance of finding it when you need it. That's why I have been searching desperately for a neat app that's gonna take care of this mess. My requirements: fast and easy adding of recipes and photos (duh!), simple organization and search and nice layout when viewing on-screen and printing. Pretty straight forward, no?

After some research I narrowed my list down to five apps - Measuring Cup, MacGourmet, Connoisseur, Yum, and YummySoup - and downloaded all of them.

All of them have are easy to navigate: categories on the left, content on the right, much like iTunes, and you can add categories - sometimes even "smart categories" and subcategories - as many as you like.

Adding a recipe is very similar with all the apps: just fill in the blank form. But that form is more or less extensive depending on the app. While Yum only has the necessities, like title, portion, time, rating, ingredients, directions and a picture, Measuring Cup also lets you add the calories, YummySoup has space for a description, difficulty level, ethnicity and a source, Connoisseur asks for cuisine and course and with MacGourmet you can fill out a multi-page questionnaire with all of the above and detailed tables.

All apps offer easy backup/export/import functionality, some go a step further, like exporting to different formats, sharing via email, importing an online catalog of recipe, synchronizing with your iPhone and importing recipes from other sources. MacGourmet and Yum even have their own iPhone apps, but since synchronizing requires a shared WiFi connection of MacBook and iPhone I was unfortunately unable to test the functionality.

Since all apps use tables for the ingredients with specific fields for "amount", "unit" and "ingredient" it's usually not possible to simply copy & paste this part of the recipe from a website or another digital file. To make it easier some apps have smart import options given that you adjusted the unit settings to your needs: Connoisseur is able to import a recipe in simple text format into the "New Recipe" form, even filling in the ingredients and units although this didn't work flawlessly for me, it still saves a lot of time. Yum has a similar option, where you can copy & paste the ingredients into the directions field and have the app draw them into the right columns. The smartest importer however is offered by YummySoup with their so-called Any-Site Web Importer. It's a built-in web browser that lets you mark certain parts of a website that are then automatically filled into the "New Recipe" form. In addition a drag & drop import is available as well.

Conclusion: Measuring Cup is a free program and definitely worth checking out. If it had a way of importing recipes this would have been my first choice. I was even able to use it in German. Connoisseur rings in at $19,95, but unfortunately doesn't store photos along with the recipes and that was a deal breaker for me. MacGourmet costs $24,95. It only offers an importer for selected websites and I felt quite overwhelmed with all the details when adding a new recipe. Yum is a solid, but expensive choice at €21,00 (~$28,00). I like the ability to edit the print layouts and the option to print on small cards. However I failed to change the way the photo was displayed and printed with the recipe, all huge and pixely and cut off. So my choice right now is YummySoup for a decent $20 even though it has the most awful icon I love the importer and the way the recipes are displayed with a picture slideshow. The print and on-screen layouts are nice and organized, the app helps you scale the recipes and it even offers full-screen view while cooking and a shopping list and beverage inventory functionality. There is a slight room for improvement, and I'm going to send a quick note to the author, but overall this was my favourite!

DVD Library App

My other quest was the search for a DVD library app for my iPhone. I have been using Delicious Library on my MacBook for a while now, but unfortunately their iPhone app was pulled from the store very fast due to Amazon's restrictions on using their data on mobile devices.

My goal was to simply have all of my DVD stored on my iPhone, searchable with nice covers. Again I wasn't able to use the synchronizing option that many apps are using, simply because my MacBook and my iPhone cannot use the same WiFi connection (long story!), so importing the data from my Delicious Library wasn't an option and I needed a way to add my DVDs fast - therefore a barcode scanner was a requirement as well. In addition I wanted the ability to add and search by actors as well as make a note if a DVD was loaned out. Last but not least I wanted a DVD wish list so I can get rid of my stupid spreadsheet!

While some of the programs I found had a free "lite" version for testing purposes, many didn't so I had to go by screenshots, ratings and reviews, and unfortunately ended up buying a program that turned out to be useless for me... Many were ruled out simply due to their awful layout (I do not need colored background images on every page, thank you very much!)

One of the most popular apps is called Movies. It was almost perfect except you can't search by actor. iMovieList seems to be fairly new, but looks promising nonetheless as it can store both movies and TV shows. However I didn't find anything about search for actor or a barcode scanner and I was not willing to manually search for 450 DVDs on imdb.com!

I ended up using iCollect Movies and I am VERY happy with it. You can add DVDs by scanning the barcode, entering the barcode number manually or simply adding all the info yourself. The barcode scanner was super fast and accurate, there were only a couple of times when I had to enter the code by hand and even fewer occasions when nothing was found for the entered code. I did add 450 DVDs without going crazy In most cases the cover was added automatically, if not - or if I wasn't happy with it - I was able to change it fast and easy by either using Google search, taking a photo of the cover myself or using a picture from photo roll. The movie details page links to imdb.com and rottentomatoes.com, tons of information can be added and edited very easily (i.e. Format, Star Rating, Description, Loaned Out, Last Time Watched, Type, Genre, Rating, Year, Length, Region, ... ), actors and directors can even be pulled from a database. You can switch between list view and cover view, when you turn your iPhone you even have a stylish CoverFlow! You can customize which information and which shortcuts you'd like on the main page, you can search by any information available, there are tons of settings and even a wishlist. iCollect Movies has everything I was looking for and I think €2,39 is a very reasonable price.