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Songbird the Open Source iTunes?
An anonymous reader writes "Cnet has an interesting story about a company about to release an open source alternative to iTunes. Apparently, the software can be used with a multitude of music services." From the article: "Apple's iTunes is 'like Internet Explorer, if Internet Explorer could only browse Microsoft.com,' Lord said. 'We love Apple, and appreciate and thank them for setting the bar in terms of user experience. But it's inevitable that the market architecture changes as it matures.'"
It isn't iTunes that prevents me from "buying" from any of the other online music stores. It's the clients required by those stores that prevent me.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
"Apple's iTunes is 'like Internet Explorer, if Internet Explorer could only browse Microsoft.com,' Lord said."
Praise the Lord!
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
Well, its about time someone did do it. Its got immense possibilities - but how would music stores react to it? For all you know, they might (as in the case of IE) have ActiveX controls/or propreitary media formats which tell you to go and use their own software.. or activate some locks/feature constrictions which would be solved given time, but would still render the service unusable.
/. is falling behind the times?
I remember Fairplay (or was it Playfair), the tool which allowed encoded Apple music files to be played on any MP3 player - what a ruckus that caused!
I read about this about 2 days ago though - is this is a sign that
If Bill Gates had a dime for every time a Windows box crashed...oh, wait a minute - he already does.
IIRC:
Fairplay: Apple's DRM scheme
PlayFair: OSX tool to remove said DRM
...I give them about 5 minutes post-release before they are hit with the mother of all cease-and-desist notices from Apple Legal.
I know that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but come on here. At least try to make your cut-and-paste jobs a bit less obvious.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
On to the article:So this is just a product announcement.Nothing to see here, move along....
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
No thank you, I already have amaroK. I get music by running wget recursively. amaroK does everything I could wish for. It even comes preinstalled with KDE ditros like SuSE.
My Linux - (L)ove (I)s (N)ever (U)tterly eXPensive
But this gets me wondering, maybe the web browser shouldn't be splitting up content? On one hand we have Google with tools like AJAX trying to bring everything together in one browsing experience (Video, maps, mail, etc.). On the other, you have extra programs like iTunes and Thunderbird. For both experiences, the kernel is having content being independent of the medium. I would say that having everything blended together is a much better internet experience. Maybe this is what Microsoft was trying to do integrating Internet Explorer into the OS? Or maybe the web browser really is going to be an operating system for the future.
This program should be a lesson for everyone who tries to claim that Apple software is nothing special with just a pretty UI skin that anyone could make.
I really hope Apple drops their hardware and migrates Cocoa to Windows and Linux.
The Microsoft and Linux APIs are so jarringly hideous and clunky it is painful to have to use for anyone who has grown up on OS X.
If you are a Windows or Linux application developer, please, if you don't have a Mac or haven't really spent time with OS X. Pick something like a button or text field AND STUDY IT. And I mean really look closely at it and nothing else. Note the timing, shading, feedback, action, EVERYTHING.
It is all there. There is no excuse for Windows and Linux to be so damn clunky in 2006. There are things that Apple nailed down TWENTY YEARS AGO that still are completely missed in non-OS X APIs/GUIs.
There is a reason people rave about the feel of OS X.
Aren't amaroK and Rhythmbox the open source iTunes?
I'd feel more sympathy to this cause if it wasn't for the fact that all the other music stores* sell DRMed content that only works on Windows. Apple at least had the consideration to get iTunes working nicely under Windows. WMP still sucks under the Mac (typical of Microsoft though).
* - Well save for the oddball one that sells actual MP3s of some band that I've never heard of and doesn't sound that particularly good or a particular Russian one who gives no money to the artist at all.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I guess that MusikCube fits better in the description of an "open source iTunes" counterpart.
Anyone remember Flock? Totally magical! Will change the way you browse the web! Will shine your shoes and feed your cat!
Or not. It's essentially Firefox plus some random blog-editing tools and a "pretty" interface. Songbird, IMHO, will be much the same. So far the only feature that people like is the "URL Slurper"... which basically amounts to wget recursively. Don't get me wrong... I'm all for competition, especially when it's Open-Source vs. Closed-Source. That said, I can't see much worth getting hyped up about: the interface is nothing new (but more cluttered than iTunes), the "URL Slurper" isn't anything the world hasn't seen with wget and curl, and I think the project might be at risk legally.
The optimist in me will make sure I download and try it the first day that it's available. The pessimist reminds me that getting hyped up will make me less receptive to a good product.
The real litigious bastards...
Playfair - http://sarovar.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=474
I was talking about the tool itself - and I don't think its OSX only. Sarovar hosts GNU projects, and I remember seeing something about its use on Linux and *nix systems. Couldn't be bothered to google when commenting!!
If Bill Gates had a dime for every time a Windows box crashed...oh, wait a minute - he already does.
Another serious piece of software coming out of the OSS community and something really needed, probably more then most people thought (myself included). I use all the services they include in their pre-release screens. A lot. I can't see how this wouldn't be a win-win. Even if Apple gets sore about it. Emusic has worked to maintain a Linux client, but its been getting pretty rough. This is a great resource that will make purchasing music simpler. Isn't that what everybody wants anyway? Labels win, artists win, users win. Only my pocket book feels any real pain, and thats pain I'd happily live with. :)
Quack, quack.
Apple might want a little more than a simple "thank you"... money talks.
(and posted as an AC to avoid karma whoring)
A Firefox for music?
By John Borland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: December 22, 2005, 4:00 AM PST
If digital-music veteran Rob Lord wanted to court controversy with his new open-source start-up, he probably couldn't have done much better than to compare Apple Computer's iTunes software to Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser.
Lord's new five-person company, the ambitiously named Pioneers of the Inevitable, is building a piece of digital-music software called "Songbird," based on much of the same underlying open-source technology as the Firefox Web browser.
With their first technical preview expected early next year, the programmers want to create music-playing software that will work naturally with the growing number of music sites and services on the Web, instead of being focused on songs on a computer's hard drive. That's where iTunes, which plugs only into Apple's own music store, falls short, Lord argues.
Apple's iTunes is "like Internet Explorer, if Internet Explorer could only browse Microsoft.com," Lord said. "We love Apple, and appreciate and thank them for setting the bar in terms of user experience. But it's inevitable that the market architecture changes as it matures."
An Apple representative declined to comment.
It is undeniable that music software and services are moving increasingly off the hard drive and onto the Web. But if Songbird is to be the "Firefox of MP3" when it's done, it has a long way to go.
Indeed, analysts question whether a world awash in music-playing software from Apple, Microsoft, RealNetworks, Yahoo, Sony and others really needs another digital jukebox.
Among those giants, Microsoft's Media Player accounts for 45 percent of all PC music playing, Apple's iTunes captures 17 percent, and the rest fall off sharply from there, according to U.S. statistics from the NPD Group.
But even with those odds, Lord has enough of a pedigree to make the industry stop and take notice. A co-founder of the Internet Underground Music Archive, an online music site predating the MP3 boom, as well as one of the first employees at Winamp creator Nullsoft, he was most recently a product manager for the launch of Yahoo's music software and subscription service, after his last start-up, Taco Bell, was purchased by the portal.
Songbird could have a built-in audience of open-source fans to give it a good start. And don't forget, just a few years ago, who would have counted on the success of the Firefox browser? Since its first full-version release a year ago, the Mozilla Foundation's Firefox has defied skeptics and managed to grab close to 8 percent or 9 percent of the browser market, although estimates vary.
And programmers working with the Mozilla Foundation say the Songbird project has their attention.
"We're excited to see an ecosystem of companies building technology around Mozilla," said Scott MacGregor, technical lead for the Thunderbird project, an open-source e-mail reader. "It's a healthy sign for Mozilla and open source in general."
Under the microscope
Even before the software has been released, Songbird has stirred up a hornet's nest of online critics and boosters on outside blogs and even on the company's own Web site.
Screenshots posted on the company's Web site show a software application clearly modeled closely after iTunes' browsing style. The parallels drew instant ridicule from Apple loyalists, who pointed out that Apple had in fact patented software with three "panes" for browsing through a media collection.
Until the software is released even in a preview stage, it's hard to tell whether that will indeed be a problem. But Lord says that's missing the point.
iTunes does have a good basic interface for browsing a music collection, but Songbird isn't tied to any one look, he said. It's built on technology that allows developers to change the look of the application with the same simple tools the
Their product is way too similar to that of apple's Itunes for it to not get stopped. Also, why would you bother with something like this when programs such as amarok do everything that Songbird does but better, minus the interfacing with online store. Downloading of illegal music, and ripping tracks seems to work a lot better, and be supported by a lot more than just the stores that you bought it from. Songbird's only feature is that it can interface with lots of music stores, and when most of these stores only have content for a specific player, it turns into simply a matter of "songbird is cool because it supports my player", not "songbird is cool because it lets me download songs from a huge array of music stores"
It only works on Linux and other Unix-like systems. It does not work on Windows or the Mac (it is in fink, but audio out doesn't work making it quite useless).
Hopefully it will one day work everywhere, since it is an awesome player. IMHO, amaroK could easily take over if it worked on more platforms.
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
Sounds like he's got some experience aside from the mouth-piecing. Your's is pure Slashdot quality speculation/nay-saying. Forgive me for not being as impressed. We need something like this and they have something of a background. I wish them the best and I'll hold my judgement until I can noodle around with it.
Quack, quack.
I read about this about 2 days ago though - is this is a sign that /. is falling behind the times?
Not at all. It takes a little bit longer for articles to pass editorial review so that we don't have such things as dupes or obvious attempts to increase a poster's AdSense revenue.
These are prerelease screens everyones getting so hopped up about. Who are any of us to say what the later incarnations are to look like? It looks to me like he's driving the point home that while he respects iTunes innovation he feels like they've chosen lock-in over broader useablity. Understandably, but we; the users; end up losing. He's got a lot of attention with the stunt, but by no means does he A) sound like a stupid person B) is the interface tied to being iTunes-like. It makes sense to me to be a perfect jump-point but as they mention on their website this is by no means a release. Not even a beta and with the final product at least a year off I'm sure a lot will change, even if Apple sic's it lawyers on them. :)
Quack, quack.
Make an add-on for Amarok.
IMHO it is second to none when it come to managing your music collection. Imagine adding an optional Buy-Here tab with x+1 companies to buy your music from.
I have never bought music online, I never will. I would disable any tab that I saw like that in Amarok.
But my point is; Itunes is/was a good jukebox style player. iTunes has it's issues, alas it's not available natively for Linux.
Amarok excells as a music center, AND runs natively in Linux.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
I am just curious as why this is in hardware? I was pretty sure I read "software" in the article...
If OpenOffice and Firefox are signs of the coding skills of most Open Source developers then I am worried. While the linux kernel seems to have high performance I don't know if this project will. The reason this is a big deal where as a browser or word processor can get away with it, is because mp3 players have to index thousand of songs and media these days. I've attempted to use mp3 players in the past that couldn't handle the load (Winamp3 for example) and I'm wondering if the open source community really wants to attempt this.
Then again I guess I don't know enough about amarok and the linux media centers which could prove that it is possible. I'm always hestitant when it comes to open source and effiency. Also the attitude of the slashdot community being that it is ran by the OSDL is to tag anything anti OSS as flame bait and troll so that is why I'm posting anymously. Just keep that in mind next time you guys get angry at commercial companies for suing when someone posts a bad review of their products.
The Microsoft and Linux APIs are so jarringly hideous and clunky it is painful to have to use for anyone who has grown up on OS X.
If you are a Windows or Linux application developer, please, if you don't have a Mac or haven't really spent time with OS X. Pick something like a button or text field AND STUDY IT. And I mean really look closely at it and nothing else. Note the timing, shading, feedback, action, EVERYTHING.
First, GUI != API.
API is the application programming interface; usually a collection of objects, which have propteries and methods you can use or extend or override. The API is the roadmap to these items.
As for the OS X button/text fields vs Linux & Windows button/text fields... are you serious? Study them? Timing, action? Let's get real here, it's a bitmap swap. The OS X versions have a pretty glass look to them, the Windows versions look like smooth beveled plastic, and Linux ones look however you want them to look.
I love my Mac, and I think it has the best looking operating system of the three mentioned, but I don't really see where the interface elements are better in any other regard than their outward appearance.
How old are you? Ten? OSX has been around for what, five years? Seems like another FanBoy had his mind wiped pre OSX...
Its kind of easy to get caught up with the iTunes comparisons. But if you look hard you'll see a url-bar. Its a browser/rss feed-reader with integrated music play/download/management features. Its a damn slick idea. If you read a little bit more about it (either the CNET article or on the songbird site itself) you'll see they've got some great plans to take advantage of the Mozilla code end of things, custom music stores, easy web-based integration for individuals/start-ups/stores.
The project is ambitious. But if it succeeds, it could change the face of the web, at least the music portion of it in a way that's really benificial to us all (musicians included).
Amarok is a great project, but its approach is a a single platform media player/manager. This is a media outlet/portal, with management thrown in for excellent measure.
Of course it may never happen, or it could flop. According to the website we'll all have at least a year to wait before we can declare it anything other then an interesting project. My hat's off to them.
Quack, quack.
MusikCube rocks!
Anyone who is looking for a lightweight player for Windows should look no further. Simple, elegant, efficient.
lol. do you really see that happening?
A product announcement about an as of yet undeveloped peice of software that is suppost to replace something else... it'll probably be made using some cross-system portable gui that looks like crap. It'll have to work on a million different configurations because everyone will get a vote and it'll be testy as hell.
yeah... Apple's target market is gonna eat this up...
lol
Don't get so hung up on looks. Its a browswer, look at the url-bar. Seems to me they've pushed the apple thing for a number of reasons, but there is no lock-in with the look or style of the thing. Its not even in *any* form of release at this point and it sounds to me like he's trying to generate some buzz, maybe get some developer support. I hope he does because if you look past the immediate iTunes comparisons you'll see it so much more really. He thanks Apple for showing what good design can look like, but he makes it clear (if you read the site) that this project can be so much more then just an iTune's clone.
:)
Anyhow, its early yet.
Quack, quack.
based on much of the same underlying open-source technology as the Firefox Web browser.
Your "some cross-system portable gui" is XulRunner, which is the foundations of Firefox. Songbird will be written in XUL, Javascript, XPCOM etc., like Firefox is.
Klearlooks theme + the Clearlooks color scheme. Not quite as nice as Clearlooks yet, but it's getting there.
Lipstick is also quite nice.
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
The Lord goes on to say "We love Apple." Of course, us die hard Apple fanboys knew that all along.
With names like Thunderbird, Firefox, and Songbird, I think we may just run out of open source animals.
Seriously, how many dead animals will we install linux on?
"I'm a well-wisher, in that I don't wish you any specific harm."
The screenshots look alot to me like Musicmatch Jukebox, which was around before iTunes and the iTMS.
Moderation Totals: Flamebait=2, Troll=1, Redundant=1, Insightful=6, Overrated=1, Underrated=1, Total=12. (not mine)
And here I thought they would expand awareness of Creative Commons licensed music and all of the netlabels that are out there.
what a bunch of B.S.
wait what does iTunes do that a web browser can't? Isn't the web browser, the web browser of music services? Its only purpose I can tell, is to restrict, but we dont really need a program or protocal that doesn't restrict we already have one the web browser and HTTP.
Well, for my two cents...
95 percent of the world uses mostly sites that are user friendly aka. AOL, MSN, Yahoo and Google. The *nix/open source world is for those who want to express their individualism, which is great, it's just a vast majority of the world seeks the ease of use. Unless it's extremely easy to learn, understand and use...forget about it. Sites like iTunes and those that provide these things will win...those that don't will evaporate. I use only those sites that are easy to understand and use. When I find one I e-mail it to all my friends. This is what goes on in the real world.
It seems there will always be those who will pose something new but in the end will always be difficult for 99 percent of normal people to use. Good for them, go use it, love it and be one with it...only don't go trying to make it sound as if it's something that's better than AOL, MSN, Yahoo or Google, because in the end most of the world won't find it that way. Come to grips with the world and its inhabitants...we're simple. We seek the easiest way of doing things...those that do will win our hearts, those that don't will always be on the sidelines...second string players so to speak. Rail against us if you must, in the end it will do not good. Those that provide the easiest way of doing something on the Internet will always win. That seems to be something that others don't understand and never will, always whining about...as if it means something...when in the end...it really doesn't
We're simple folk...complex in some sense but simple in most. So go do those things that excite you, make you feel as if you're finding something new when, in the end, has been thought about, beta'd and found useless by those mega-websites. AOL, MSN, Yahoo and Google who spend millions on these things. To think you can do better is what dreams are made of. Your only hope is that you will come up with something that they will want to buy...globalization...globalization...Chinanizatio n...Chinanization.
sweet the non alpha version of songbird is now available here
Cnet is for newbies and everything on it is five months old.
As a slashdot poster I must be ultra-critical about everything despite being a stupid nerd.
With Firefox or MSIE I cannot click on a link to download an mp3 and have it play while it's downloading. I can use MS Media (yuck) to download it and play it, but then I have to "save" it somewhere. And in linux I can click on the "part" file if I know to do that or I can use wget and play it as it downloads, but those are both geeky non-easy things for newbies to do.
Having a music shopping app where you can (for example) "audition" a track at a streamable (but ugly) 32kbps then click a "buy" button and have it (and the artwork) automatically download to the proper folder and be available in your playlist immediately would be much easier than just using Firefox or IE to browse generic web pages.
amaroK will soon be ported to Windows (and I think also Mac). The Version to look for will be amaroK 2.0 which will be based on Qt 4. Should arrive at about the same time as KDE 4, which means roughly Q3/2006.
"Among those giants, Microsoft's Media Player accounts for 45 percent of all PC music playing, Apple's iTunes captures 17 percent, and the rest fall off sharply from there, according to U.S. statistics from the NPD Group."
So he doesn't know the difference between WMP & Quicktime?
How about comparing MS's music purchase store, music management & purchase system, to iTunes?
What a novel idea. No thanks.
My karma is getting better everyday.
In other news, Cat Got Your Tongue Software is creating a package that will determine in advance if a user's appendix is ready to burst. With the optional Scalpel Hardware System, the software will remove the organ while the user sleeps.
"We have this great idea," a company spokesman noted, "and we have a few guys who are working out some of the details. All we know for sure is that this is going to revolutionize medicine."
John Armstrong, M.D., of the American Medical Association, refused to comment on this story.
It's not the same thing. Firefox was made by Mozilla, who made Netscape, IE's past only concurrent. "Firefox vs. IE" is the same "Mozilla vs. Microsoft" that's been on since the first release of Internet Explorer. here, MS's rival only re-bore from its hashes under a new name.
You just got troll'd!
Anyone else notice that this was marked as a 'handhelds' story. I can't find how it is related to handhelds though...
iTunes is not similar to Internet Explorer what so ever, unless you're on a Macintosh, you need to download it or install iTunes manually, it's a choice you make.
You don't have to buy an iPod or use the iTunes Music Store. In fact you can happily go by using your computer and never have to know neither Apple nor iTunes.
Internet Explorer was the at the centre of a monopoly, it came preinstalled, full of bugs and consumers were crying for alternatives for almost 10 years before the Firefox project came and provided a reasonable "answer".
There are very few people out there crying for an iTunes alternative, the iTunes popularity is rather justly earnt and is only used by people who are interested in listening to music on an iPod or purchasing music from iTMS. Consumers aren't demanding that iPods or iTunes work with other online music stores or other music programs. In fact the only people I actually hear complaining are Real and Creative.
The other online stores are -amazingly- bad, poorly laid out, with pricing models that reflect one theme "greed", the model of "download as many or as few songs as you like, but pay for them until the day that you die otherwise we take them back from you" is ridiculous.
But not as ridiculous as the excessively under-designed garbage pieces of electronics they want you to play them on, where they franchise that a 64kbps Windows media file as a decent alternative to 128kbps AAC audio.
So if those are my "choices", I'm pretty pleased to be giving my attention to iTunes and Apple, as they certainly seem to have a much better clue about what they're doing and are satisfying what I'm asking for in technology vs. music and willing to upgrade their product regardless of what the competition is up to.
fair enough.
...once it's written...
I think however that they're refering to the fact that the itunes music store is just a web service... so the gekko engine being used in their music store interface is the more likely relationship. Even if they're refering to the rest of the interface (buttons menus etc) is common to firefox, it still won't make a dent in iTunes with apple's target market....
Even firefox hasn't made a dent in market share of Safari... barely a dent (14%?) of the IE share... and that's gonna all but disappear in a year or so when Vista comes out with (no doubt) all kinds of renovations and eyecandy that'll attract the masses.
Eye candy wins out in the short run... stability and useablity in the long run...
Since they keep releasing new versions with new eyecandy every few months/years they'll stay on top. The firefox saga shows just how long people will stick with what they already have despite how horrible it is. People STILL predominantly use IE6... despite the fact that it's not been updated in HOW long?!?
This new media player will be a flash in the pan at best, and most likely vaporware.
Nobody's gay for Mole-Man.
Aside from the interface duplication, the article's comparison to IE is a bit...wrong.
How about this one: Apple's iTunes is like a Ford transmission, if said Ford transmission only worked in Ford vehicles.
The program's layout and design, the music store's functionality, layout, contracts and agreements, *everything* was done by Apple for iTunes users. If there is an open source group that wants to go and design something NEW, and do the work to get it right the first time (not that I expect they would from design history) then THAT would be something worth celebrating. The article should be more focused on the numerous technical problems it faces and the likelihood of quick legal defeats.
Smalltalk was, in fact, developed at Xerox PARC in the 1970's.
NeXT combines the Smalltalk programming model, the Stepstone Objective-C language, the GNU compiler, the CMU Mach kernel, and the Adobe Postscript language (not much original there, but at least NeXT paid for some of it). Jobs did a great job at putting together NeXT out of existing technologies, but he didn't exactly contribute a lot of technology.
Let me repeat: there is nothing wrong for Apple copying from other people, but Apple should stop complaining (and sueing) when people copy from them.
what exactly are these people doing that is new?
Just so you know, I modded you down not for your opinion, which is certainly valid, but for your mod down dare. Just happens to be my little crusade to get people to knock off that "i'll get modded down for this" whine.
Also, your swear word caused me to smile as I clicked Moderate. Merry Christmas!
Also, your swear word caused me to smile as I clicked Moderate. Merry Christmas!
And then by replying, even though you clicked the "Post Anonymously" checkbox, you just negated the mod point you spent. Retard.
Unless he logged in from a different computer/browser/account.
Four roommates. No microwave. You do the math.
A more realistic goal would be for Linux to drop KDE and GNOME and focus on GNUStep. That way you could have a free open source equivalent of Cocoa, with source code compatibility.
Of course, it'll never happen. Too many egos are invested in going in other directions.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
It pleases me to speculate that a dude that meddlesome is wasting his time fiddling around just to feel self righteous.
resigned
More of a call to developers who might be interested. I don't see anything wrong with that. Especially on such an ambition and potentially important project. They also had planned a Windows pre-release in December that appears to have been pushed back a bit. Altogether I think it makes for a legitimate post.
Quack, quack.
Or, to be more fair/accurate: that's a matter of opinion.
How is it a matter of opinion? Care to back that up? I can say "You claim the BMW 7 series is better than a Yugo, but that's just a matter of opinion" -- but that doesn't make it so. As Paul Graham pointed out, saying something is simply "a matter of opinion" is the way to avoid arguments, not find the truth.
I personally think the iTunes interface is an absolute piece of shit, I hate it.
You seem to be in the minority.
I could list specific examples but it's Christmas day and I can't be bothered, given that an Apple fanboy will mod this to oblivion whether I give specific examples or not.
Aah, good response: I'm right, and I won't bother defending my position because somebody will disagree, anyway. Good show!
To me, I actively dislike the Apple way of doing things, not just in iTunes, but throughout OSX, and vastly prefer the WinXP approach.
What part of the WinXP approach?
- no hardware-accelerated compositing manager, so you get to watch windows redraw?
- no first-class applications, so you have to run SETUP.EXE before you use a program, and drag-n-drop is horribly inconsistent?
- no desktop-wide searching functionality, so searching for anything takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r...?
- ambiguous button labels like "Yes" and "No", so you have to read all of the text of any dialog box carefully to decode what they actually do?
I use Linux at home, but I've used both Macs and WinXP for work, and (as a software engineer for most of my life) the "WinXP approach" is terribly unprofessional. I'd be embarassed to have written anything as bad as that.
If you're going to try to defend a position as seemingly absurd as "the WinXP approach is better", you can't shy away from providing actual examples, or you *are* a troll, sir.
P.S. I think that communism in Russia worked out better than the American free market ever did. This is not a troll, or flamebait, or funny -- this is my honest opinion. I'm sick of people acting like it is an unarguable truth that the free market is guaranteed always the best. It's a matter of opinion.
Just to be fair... opinion is great and you can certainly have one, but it doesn't mean it's valid. I know a lot of people in the UK and elsewhere who insist on driving on the left side of the road.... which is fine because the have the drivers side on the right side of the car... http://users.pandora.be/worldstandards/driving%20o n%20the%20left.htm is a good read on the subject...
but if you read the history it has more to do with tradition than practicality or usefulness... which is where I'm going with this in relation to your opinion... you've grown accustomed to Windows and find an alternative method (which in my opinion is more efficient, more usable and simply better) to be less than optimal for your traditional workflow. You are correct of course. The workflow that you have become accustomed to will not give you optimal results in a system that isn't configured to take advantage of it... or more reasonably... your workflow is not configured to take advantage of the system.
Many OS9 experts had the same dificulties in migrating to OS X... though obviously less so as they were more determined to find the similarities and 'normalize' the differences until they discovered a new and better way to work within the system.
I suspect you never took the time as it was too alien for you to find a comfort zone and expand from there... you simply said... this doesn't work for me, so it must not work at all.
I on the other hand had a background in both OS 9 and Windows and Linux when the OS X beta came out... and set myself to discovering it's hidden secrets immediately. Now I have a seriously hard core work flow system in place that takes advantage of both a mature GUI and a VERY mature CLI... with a rock solid kernel and subsystem I can count on to nine 9s when it comes to stability and predictable results... something I have never been able to do with Windows (it's always one hack or another or a new license fee for software that should be included and still it's not stable or predictable).
So continue driving on the left side if you will... there's plenty of support for it if you choose that route... but don't blind yourself to the fact that there is a better way if you choose to embrace it and learn a new API for doing the tasks that need to get done.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
They did add that download app, but ages ago now. Getting it working requires installing a proxy and some other weird configuration, but it still works.
:).
That said, you can change your preferences: goto 'Your Account'>'Change Download Manager'>'Disable eMusic Download Manager'. Its still a good service.
If you've been using it as long as I have I'd guess the big deal you refer to was when they went from all you can download at a fixed (low) price to a allotment/subscription services (I think its 40/65/90 downloads with prices ranging from $9.99 to $19.95).
I do an internet radio program so I actually use the service a lot still. Good selection of music if you're needs aren't todays top 10 billboard (thats what allofmp3.com is for right?
Quack, quack.
Others have rightly pointed out that Apple's legal department will run this into the ground, but they've missed the most important reason why:
When you purchase a song from the iTunes Music Store, the AAC file is downloaded without FairPlay DRM encryption. The iTunes software adds the FairPlay DRM while downloading, encrypting the file with your iTMS account ID. An open-source client wouldn't do this (or at least wouldn't have to, if it could). Apple would be in a heap of trouble with the record labels if they allowed this software to exist.
The only way to make it work is to move the encryption process from the client to the server, which would significantly increase Apple's costs (in addition to the huge CPU requirements of encrypting every song they sell, they probably wouldn't be able to use Akami's distribution network anymore).
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
yeah, ignorance will do that to you.
It's a shame you don't have a clue about UI. Apple may not have the perfect interface, but it's a damn sight nicer and more usable than what MS has been shitting out for the past 8 years.
By the way, you seem just as biased against Apple as any MS fanboy I've met, and just as biased as most Apple fanboys are against MS.
and MSN? God forbids one of those.
Where is that guy who'd die defending what I had to say when I need him?
This initiative sort of, kind of has a shot at winning *if* there is a long tail in music stores. I don't think there is.
The long tail is the concept that if you can cater to all the niche products in music, books, etc. in an efficient way, you can make more money on the products that don't sell very well than you can on best sellers. Amazon thrives on the long tail.
But while there is value in offering every piece of music under the sun, where's the value in providing every DRM/payments scheme under the sun? All you're doing is weighting your interface down with complexity. 99% of music yo want is going to be available in iTnes. When that changes, it's pretty simple to add a line in the interface that accommodates the newly poplar method of distribtion. Does anybody remember that iTMS itself was just this sort of add-in once upon a time?
So where's the value added other than adding platform support for all the platforms where Mozilla exists but iTunes does not? You have to posit both a highly fragmented DRM universe and an Apple that refuses to adjust to this new reality of heterogeneous licensing markets. I don't think either are very likely.
Some group of thiefs stole iTunes interface and GUI. Making it opensource does not matter.
Apple actually bought the iTunes interface. Full details at http://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/ . Good read for all developers.
Here is what Apple PAID FOR http://www.macupdate.com/screenshot.php?id=3714
How is "which music software I like" (repeat: ***I*** like) not a matter of opinion?!?
saying something is simply "a matter of opinion" is the way to avoid arguments, not find the truth.
If you really think there's an unarguable "truth" when it comes to preference in music software user interface, you're an even bigger retard than I thought.
You seem to be in the minority.
Hence, I'm obviously wrong, and my opinion is obviously worthless, and can be automatically discounted?
Nice logic.
By that argument, both Apple and Linux (being extreme minorities) are completely pointless and anybody who uses them can be ignored. What... No? You don't agree, all of a sudden? Strange.
If you're going to try to defend a position as seemingly absurd as "the WinXP approach is better", you can't shy away from providing actual examples, or you *are* a troll, sir.
I will admit the lack of examples was weak, but c'mon, it WAS christmas day ;]
Anyway... let's see. What annoys me about iTunes...
- Navigate to an album. Double click to load a track. Wonder what else you might queue up next, so navigate to another album. Now - how do I get straight back to the album that's currently playing? How do I bring up id3 info for what's currently playing? Or how do I enqueue a song so it plays when the current one has finished, instead of it cutting the current one off and playing immediately? Also, with that last point, how do I do that from a file manager/browser window also?
Now, I'm not saying those things are impossible with iTunes. I'm sure an Apple expert will be able to fill me in. But, I have yet to figure out how to do it. And the curious thing, is that the Apple-rocks brigade nearly always justify that stance with the claim that Apple UIs are dead easy to figure out for complete computer n00bs. How come, then, that I've spent ages clicking around in iTunes and can't for the life of me accomplish these, which are all a doddle in winamp?
What other things... well. On Winamp/Windows, if I ever don't know how to do something, I can try right-clicking it, and 95% of the time, that'll give me some options. No such joy with OSX (no, it's not that I'm not using a one button mouse, I'm well aware OSX supports multiple buttons, it's that there are no right-click hooks).
I hate the way files without id3 tags become practically invisible in iTunes, even if their filename spells out what they are.
And above all - I hate the way iTunes cannibalises your mp3 collection into some idiotic /SYSTEM/username/music/012376anv82a/01231239na9dv9 .mp3 storage system. I personally like organising my music myself. In directories. With id3 tags and filenames providing a "dual/redundancy" of identification.
Strange, but I'm sure if I'd said "I don't like iTunes, because it forces you to do it Apple's way - I prefer using {insert 6 obscure KDE apps here} for my ripping, burning and listening needs, because I like doing it my way", I'd have gotten praise. I'd have had lots of people agreeing it's annoying to be forced into a "One True Music Collection" methodology, and it's nice to organise it yourself. But, because I dared to suggest I actually like the XP platform, with Winamp/Nero/CDEX, I'm a "troll".
P.S. I think that communism in Russia worked out better than the American free market ever did. This is not a troll, or flamebait, or funny -- this is my honest opinion. I'm sick of people acting like it is an unarguable truth that the free market is guaranteed always the best. It's a matter of opinion.
Bwahaha. Funny you should say that. You're obviously predicating this on the notion that everyone who reads it will agree it IS an unarguable fact that the American free market is the best system out there. ROFL. Well, not everyone on slashdot is a naive libertarian extremist. Hint: you don't have a "free market", you never have had, in fact nobody ever has had.
(And, no, I don't rate Russian communism above it, but I certainly rate moderate/progressive Scandinavian-style socialism above it.)
A Firefox for music? It is called foobar2000. No, it's not open-source. But the premise is there: freedom. Freedom over the formats you want to use, the looks, usability, versatility, etc.
....continuing the long tradition making inferior copies of commercial products. Where is the innovation?
What exactly are these people doing that is new?
Aren't amaroK and Rhythmbox the open source iTunes?
Neither amaroK nor Rhythmbox works in Windows.
I'm forced to use Windows for listening to music at work and also at home, because ALSA doesn't deem it important to properly support ALC850 in nforce 4. I'm looking forward to proper Open Source music player for windows.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
Also, whenever a programmer thinks, "Hey, skins, what a cool idea", their computer's speakers should create some sort of cock-shaped soundwave and plunge it repeatedly through their skulls. - makali
HA! I fully support your proposed audio-cock technology. - jwz
Methinks I heard the braying of a donkey coming from your direction.