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The Real Story of Audion
mijkal writes "Panic's Audion music software has been retired and made freely available. The developer has a nice write up on his experiences with Audion in relation to early-MP3 days, failed AOL deals, and the could-have-been iTunes app. It's an inspiring read on the history of a shareware developer and his adventures thus far."
It's an inspiring read on the history of a shareware developer and his adventures thus far.
Shareware developer? I know what a Spyware developer is, and I know of open source and closed source; but is there really such a thing as a shareware developer anymore? There's adware, begware and nagware (hardly any freeware left, but there is some)... but this shareware is not computing. I can't think of one product that is truly shareware; "A shareware program is accompanied by a request for payment, and often payment is required per the terms of the license past a set period of time (although some consider this requirement to cause the software to be not shareware but a demo)."
Well I guess Audion is going the way of actual freeware. Nice!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Much preferred SoundJam, mainly from an interface point of view, but also because Panic's apps aren't the most stable things in the world. It (SoundJam) still does things that I much prefer to iTunes, mainly no song database and having Finder-labeled files showing up in their proper colours in the playlist. Very useful for quickly finding all the bad files I label Brown. :)
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
It's nice that this program is being made available, rather than becoming a footnote, lost forever, in the software history books. Kudos to the programmer for being considerate of his users.
This is kind of a breath of fresh air for me. I hardly ever read accounts of Apple developers. There are infinite stories of Linux and Windows developers, but finally having the experiences of an Apple coder published is pretty cool.
- dshaw
The funniest thing is the referral to the /. announcement of the iPod.
:)
With my 20/20 hindsight glasses, the comments are hysterical.
CmdrTaco editorialized "Lame." Many vehemently predicted a miserable failure: "I don't see many sales in the future of iPod."
At the time, I thought "Really cool, but really expensive." Who could have known it would be so popular!
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I'm about 2 months in on owning my first Mac (thrilled by it, thanks) but the one thing I couldn't help notice is the absolute dearth of good mp3/audio players on OS X. iTunes is grating on my nerves! Can anyone recommend an audio/mp3/media player (pref. one that takes advantage of Cocoa) that's a little more poweruser friendly?
#roses { color: #ff0000; } #violets { color: #0000ff; }
Arguably the best MP3 player (not organizer) ever created was SoundPlay for BeOS. For the basic task of playing one or more MP3s, either cross-faded or back-to-back (or simultaneously) it was virtually unmatched in smoothness and ease-of-use -- the interface was typical BeOS, bland but instantly intuitive. Of course, it owed a lot of that to BeOS's underlying media handling.
;)
There's still (I think) a system out there using SoundPlay and an organizational system using the filesystem itself for the database, called TuneTracker...designed for automation of radio stations, but makes a killer MP3 organization/playback rig.
One small note about SoundPlay: there is a slider that allows to you alter the speed of playback infinitely (well, as much as you can in the digital realm, anyway) in real-time, with instantaneous response...and if you slide the bar far enough, it starts playing BACKWARDS at variable speeds, too.
Boy, I miss that program. Now I have to reinstall BeOS on an old box.
IANAL, and I don't have the details, but Panic might have opened themselves to legal exposure if they tried to negotiate with Apple without AOL being present. AOL would have treated such a meeting as "going behind their back" and even if they didn't sue over some technicality, their representatives in the industry could have started spreading stories about Panic developers being untrustworthy to deal with.
Yes, it's stupid. I've been the recieving end of this in college, when my chapter of ACM was forced to sign a letter of apology to a couple of reps from Author Anderson since we didn't keep them informed constantly about a presentation we invited them to. Some IT people are so full of themselves and can get away with it...
Those who complain about affect & effect on
This story was one of the best I have read in recent memory.
That said, I hate it when great programmers just sit on a product and stop innovating or coming up with new directions to take their product.
In my opinion, Panic should try to become something like Pixo and create great Mac friendly interfaces for Mp3 portable players or work with Napster and Real, and Microsoft to produce a player that will play secure WMP files well on a Mac.
My preference was always towards SoundJam over Audion, but still after SoundJam became iTunes - I leaned towards Audion for the custom skins.
If interested, I wrote a bit about this on my website.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny