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.'"

Comments

It's not the client, it's the store

[Mononoke]

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.

Judging by their screenshots...

[Doktor Memory]

...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.

Re:Judging by their screenshots...

[QuantumFTL]

In any case, the application domain doesn't really matter much; the UI itself is a rip-off of numerous NeXT and Smalltalk interfaces... But there is something wrong about it when Apple complains about it, given that their entire company is based on taking the best ideas out of other UIs and then modifying them.

You do know that Apple bought NeXT, don't you?

Songsuck

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Songsuck

[Reaperducer]

I don't see them running out and supporting linux, bsd or solaris though with iTunes.

They don't support FreeDOS, NeXT, QNX, WinCE, SkyOS, OS/2, OS/9, SGI, Sun, BeOS, AmigaDOS, or my old Commodore 64, either. What's your point? Apple went after two markets: It's own, and the largest one. When Linux becomes important to Apple and to consumers, iTunes will magically appear. Right now Linux is not a factor to either. It's the same chicken-and-egg situation that Linux people have been dealing with since its inception. If people suddenly started buying Amigas by the thousands, iTunes would become available. I hate to break it to you, but in spite of the Slashdot hype, Linux is still far from critical mass.

News.Context

[TubeSteak]

I like the box off to the left side that helps put things in context

What's new:
A five-person company called Pioneers of the Inevitable is taking aim at Apple's iTunes with music software called Songbird that's based on much of the same underlying open-source technology as the Firefox Web browser.

Bottom line:
  The first technical preview of Songbird isn't expected until early next year, but it has already stirred up a hornet's nest of online critics and supporters on blogs and even on the company's own Web site.

I'll be more impressed if they code something that isn't buggy and prone to exploits, than if they manage to one up iTunes.

MusicKube

[Piroca]

I guess that MusikCube fits better in the description of an "open source iTunes" counterpart.

Huh?

[bradleyland]

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.

No one really wants an iTunes copy.

[catwh0re]

There was xTunes, then that turned into Sumi (funnily ignorant to Apple having the "sosumi" sound effect.) Plus there are numerous other iTunes copies out there, the reality is there is actually no demand for them and that is why these projects have little interest unlike for example the Mozilla project.

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.