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iTunes On OS X Finally Has Competition

Posted by timothy on from the file-managers-that-also-play-music dept.

mallumax writes "The truth is, iTunes is an average music player. Though the UI is simple and good like most Apple products, it has lagged in features compared to music players available on Linux and Windows. A feature as basic as monitoring a folder and adding the latest music files to the library is unavailable in iTunes. There are no plugins or themes. Despite the many faults, many of us continued to use iTunes because of the lack of options available. But today the wait is finally over. Not one, but two music players have become credible contenders. Songbird: An open source music player which has been in the works for more than 2 years has finally released its 1.0 Release Candidate builds. The team behind Songbird has members who previously developed for both Winamp and the Yahoo Music Engine. It has support for extensions and themes ('feathers' in Songbird parlance). Amarok: The undisputed champion among Linux music players is finally coming to OS X, thanks to KDE 4 being ported there. Amarok developer Leo Franchi has been able to run a Amarok on OS X natively. So we can expect a reasonably stable Amarok to hit OS X in a few months' time. Hopefully these players will gain traction among OS X users, which will finally force Apple to either step up in terms of features or open up iTunes for extensions."

4 of 668 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Feature Creep is not a Feature by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of my awesome Barack Obama firefox theme.

  2. Re:Themes? by Hatta · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm reminded of this comment sent to jwz:

    Makali wrote:

                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.

    I am fully in support of this proposed audio-cock technology.

    --
    Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
  3. Re:Themes? by mrchaotica · · Score: 4, Funny

    If the UI is not themeable and you don't like it...

    ...then you're pretty fucking stupid for continuing to use OS X at all, because iTunes is just like every other damn OS X application!

    --

    "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

  4. Re:Basic feature? by Jason+Earl · · Score: 5, Funny

    Listen, no one is forcing you to download a new music player. It sounds like what you really want is mpg321, or possibly sox's "play" command. There's probably a port to your operating system of choice.

    Everyone else in the conversation assumes that you want something a that competes with ITunes and not the MP3 player that comes with Emacs.