WinAmp's Death Greatly Exaggerated

robyannetta writes "In a previous story, we heard that WinAmp was down for the count. Apparently, this is not the case. Here is a note by Eric Caoili that says "No we weren't axed. We haven't even seen anyone with an axe. There was this one guy who came up to us to axe us a question, but that's about it.""

Comments

Can I axe you a question?

[mfh]

Why didn't you guys plan an exit event when AOL bought you? Why stick around in a new corporate culture anyway?

Re:Can I axe you a question?

[bigman2003]

Cuz you gotta stay for the big ducats..

I would be curious to know...

[JessLeah]

...who of the original lineup of Nullsoft/Winamp coders are still there.... and how many people are working on it now vs. when it was in the Winamp 1.0/2.0 stages...

Great News.

[ween14]

It is great to hear that Winamp isn't dead. I have been using it for 5 years now and haven't found a better media player yet. It is both small and quick, Windows Media Player is neither. Not to mention that I have yet to find a sound file that I couldn't get it to play, where many of my files just refuse to play in iTunes or WMP.

Re:Great News.

[Joe Tie.]

To be fair, there is/was a version of winamp for linux. A really bad version, but a version nonetheless.

Winamp = dead in my book

[FiReaNGeL]

Winamp stopped adding useful features / improvements (for me) after version 3.0... iTunes and WMP10 are much better, with song rating / automatic playlists (song I didn't heard in the past week I like, yes thank you).

Why anyone would pay for Winamp is beyond me. The free version does the job... like a bunch of programs out there. Of course, brand recognition, nostalgy and all...

Its not your fathers winamp

[maestro^]

I've been using winamp since .92 and ever since Justin left, maybe even when he sold out to AOL, it started to go downhill. Winamp is still the best player out there, but the passion, attention to detail and overall quality seems to have declined.

Re:Axe you a question..hehehehe

[lotsofno]

That is hilarious... Axe you a question.. that's making fun of black people right? Sweet racial slur. Right on. Right?

Actually, I stole if from an episode of Home Movies. I think Jason said it.

Winamp hasn't stopped moving

[Magickcat]

It is dead, it's just hasn't stopped moving yet.

Winamp is rapidly gaining the same level of "features" that Netscape did when it died - it's bloated and tries to sneakily add AOL icons to your desktop. Oh and let's not forget the spyware aspect to the commisions they get on sales - nice touch. The fact that the interface hasn't been made any easier to use, and only gets more fiddly and complicated confirms it. Winamp is the great golden flamingo God of bad user/interface design.

All they need to do now is package AOL instant messenger with it, and it will be truly dead for ever more.

Nobody knows how to fuck up a once perfectly good piece of software through bad decisions like AOL. You really know your software sucks with 100% full vacuum when your old version is actually better in every way over the latest release. Even Macromedia would be impressed with the sheer - "I wonder if the whole thing is running in some sort of emulator""-ness of it all.

Re:Winamp hasn't stopped moving

[Apathetic1]

The fact that the interface hasn't been made any easier to use, and only gets more fiddly and complicated confirms it. Winamp is the great golden flamingo God of bad user/interface design.

I use Winamp (2) and I like the interface just the way it is. It's easy to see at a glance whether shuffle and repeat are on. It's easy to see what track is playing. It's easy to see where the EQ levels are set. There's a keyboard shortcut for everything. In short, it stays out of my way.

Mind, I wish they'd stuck to audio - I can't stand the video playback. So I just don't install it. To each their own.

Media Player still sucks - it's overkill

[saskboy]

I prefer winamp still, and will be saddened when I see it go. I like it's efficient use of screen real estate, and the ease I can add songs to my playlist. Winamp, the old version 2, is still the best.

Re:whos stepping up?

[fimbulvetr]

No, although winamp is a AOL-loaded, bloated POS, audi wouldn't settle for anything that doesn't:

A. Automatically turn itself on and off, even when the car is turned off.
B. Just automatically stop playing CDs/Cassettes after no major incidents.
C. Go into SAFE mode for no reason at all.
D. Require an extra special aftermarket adapter to get another changer to work.

I could go on, and on, and on, but instead I just point you to audiworld.com

Don't get me wrong, I _love_ my a4, but the stereo blows goat ass.

Re:Funky Street Jive

[Goner]

yeah, it's no jive, the word is metathesis, the most shining example being the word wednesday. google it.

Electrical noise in PC cases

[MichaelCrawford]

The best software in the world won't help the noise I've heard in every x86 PC I've ever listened to.

Electromagnetic noise generated by the digital circuits and picked up in the analog circuitry of the sound card, making an audible buzzing and crackling sound that is most obvious when listening to what should be silence, but is often noticable in a lot of music.

I have a really nice pair of Grado Labs headphones and can't stand listening to music on my PC.

Fortunately I have three macintoshes, which all have better audio engineering. Despite posting this message from a win2k PC, I'm listening to Radio Paradise on iTunes running on my Blue & White G3 Mac.

Prefer Linux? Linux sounds best when run on Apple hardware. I also use XMMS sometimes, on an ancient Power Macintosh 8500 that runs Debian Sarge.

Re:Funky Street Jive

[Anonymous Coward]

Using "axe" instead of "ask" goes all the way back to Old English, where ascian and acsian were used interchangeably. By the time of Middle English, Chaucer used both asken and axen.

Men axed hym, what sholde bifalle ( Canterbury Tales)

See ax(2).