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Songbird Flies Today
fr1kk writes to tell us that with the recent advent of a preview version for the new open source response to iTunes, Songbird, BoingBoing has taken a few minutes to interview team lead Rob Lord. While this program may be a great alternative to the DRM ridden iTunes and Windows Media Player platforms it is still only a Windows release. The good news is that by being open source that will (hopefully) not last very long. The Songbird site appears to be swamped right now, but there are several different mirrors available to download the client.
So they rip off the iTunes interface, and then take out the Music Store and replace it with the amazing free music scattered across the internet? This just seems ridiculous. Don't like FairPlay? Use Windows Media. Don't like that? Buy CD's from Amazon or some brick and mortar store. I'll pass on the free music I don't like.
Open Source is a good start. But it appears that there is only a Windoze version...how open is that?
Exactly. Who wants to run a unstable Open Source Proof of concept program? Oh, probably all you geeks.
I suppose when Korea starts making Audi knock offs, you'd start driving those as well, even though they have like NONE of the performance or features. Whatever. Slashdot and it's articles are getting lame. A duplicate story would have been more interesting (probably one later knowing the "editors").
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
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Apple does not make it clear to the music renters that they are in fact RENTING the music. They tell the renters that they are buying the music, and this is simply not true.
Have you used any office suite lately?
I can burn as many CDs as I want, share the music with multiple computers, and copy them anywhere at will.
There is a limit in iTunes to how many CD's you can burn, you can't copy iTunes music from a shared iTunes folder, and there's a limit to how many computers can be authorized to access your music.
we've already DONE the multiple stores thing for years
ITMS is just the first one RIAA let slide. MP3.com tried to do the closest thing they could, and got their asses sued. And you can't get music from multiple stores and play it all from the same player (without cracking it). That, capitan, is what we call a monopoly. Keep using us (the first one to market), and if you switch, you can't listen to all your old music.
I have never, ever come across any limitation.
Based on your statisical sample of 1, 100% of people never see a limitation. GOooooddd.
The iTunes software is nicely designed, works well, has a lot of features, and came free with my iPod. Why would I start looking for a v0.1 FOSS replacement for it?
The same reason you use FreeBSD and LAME to encode MP3, instead of using some free-windows-propietary-app for doing it. Because, at some point, it will get better than the original and its free as in beer AND freedom.
iTunes is bloated, horribly bloted, you cant run it nicely on a P4 with 256mb and windows xp, with a bit of luck, Songbird will be much better at managing resources.
no sig
I try not to talk to cowards, but I have to say that, no, AAC is not a better encoder. It is better sonically than iTunes' mp3 encoder, but about equal to LAME. But even if it were better sonically than LAME, it would still be AAC, and create files that I can't play elsewhere, or share with others. The autoloaded program(s) take up memory, which is a resource, last I checked. As for intelligent handling, I mean that as a composer and sound designer, I have thousands of audio files that are sometimes there and sometimes not, depending on which project I am working on. Other programs do a better job of sensing which files are currently available, and which aren't, and which are duplicates. iTunes duplicates menu is tedious and often inaccurate.
"lightest major windows audio player"
none of the ones you listed would fall into that category since very few people generally use them