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iTunes On OS X Finally Has Competition
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."
Apple iPhones, iPod Touch and Microsoft Zune devices are not yet supported. Yeah, big contender.
A feature as basic as monitoring a folder and adding the latest music files to the library is unavailable in iTunes
I don't think of this as a basic feature... essentially you are asking for automated library updates whenever new files are added to the system. iTunes is built around two methods of file importation: Rip from CD or add from iTunes Store. The third option is manual: Drag and drop files to the library.
Plugins are even listed at Apple's website.
Themes are missing, I admit, but for many people this is not a "basic feature", either.
GPL Deconstructed
It's not a replacement unless it can sync with and manage my iPhone and iPod.
"why don't you just slip into something more comfortable...like a coma!"
I like iTunes specifically because it doesn't waste my time with themes and skins and color choices. How cares what your music player looks like? How many times has an attractive woman looked at the customized UI for your software and thought "Wow. There's a guy I'd like to get it on with". (Answer: Zero)
I'll grant that some competition might drive additional features into iTunes, but please please please can we stop acting like altering the UI of a program does anything even remotely useful?
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.
The features it is missing are niche features. How many of these "more feature complete" players you are using have features like Genius playlists? Video podcasts? How many also seemlessly manage the songs on your mp3(iPod) player? Smartphones(iPhone)? How many offer iTunes music sharing/streaming on the local network? How many seamlessly integrate with the most popular music store?
That's not even including the non-music features of itunes, such as syncing calendars, contacts, photos, applications, and songs with iPods and iPhones. It offers video podcasts, downloadable tv shows, and streaming internet radio.
iTunes missing one feature compared to other players does not mean it has less features overall.
We don't use iTunes because there's no credible competitor - we use iTunes because it links to the iPod and/or the AppleTV and/or Front Row. brFurther, I don't understand why people always whine about "not monitoring a folder for library changes." Who cares? I mean, apparently some people do, because they whine about it... but the iTunes Library is your music manager, not your OS folders. Treat it that way and monitoring a folder becomes irrelevant.
-Daniel
I think very few themes actually contribute to the usability of a program. Most of the time I look at an archive of themes for a program it's flooded with various nearly-unusable pictures-of-bikini-girls-made-into-interfaces type themes.
On the rare chance I find a theme I genuinely like, it's for a slightly older version of the program and half of the elements are broken.
When are developers going to admit that they should just stick to the OS's GUI toolkit? The user can then theme their entire window manager, instead of each individual program.
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It seems a bit unfair to say that iTunes has had no competitors under Mac OSX as a music player when VLC does an admirable job at playing my music and TV shows, on OSX, and has done for a long time now.
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Because people disagree on what "clean simple" means. If the UI is not themeable and you don't like it, you have to switch to a different player altogether. If it is themeable, you just need to switch to a different theme.
I don't buy that. Does skinning really achieve that? I don't think I've ever seen a skin that really improved usability. Or really changed it much.
And most people, especially average users, go with the default skin anyway. IMHO, skinning just slows things down, and it often breaks with the UI standards.
A feature as basic as monitoring a folder and adding the latest music files to the library is unavailable in iTunes.
According to Songbird's site, it doesn't support folder monitoring either. It also doesn't support iPhones, the iPod Touch, Airtunes, CD ripping (?), or video. I forget, why would I choose it over iTunes?
The truth is, iTunes is an average music player.
itunes is significantly better than average.
A feature as basic as monitoring a folder and adding the latest music files to the library is unavailable in iTunes.
How exactly is that a basic feature? Music enters itunes 3 basic ways:
1 you rip a Cd with itunes.
2 you buy a song from itunes music store
3 you drag a file from your computer onto the itunes library
and one advanced way:
4 you tell itunes to import music from a folder
Setting up itunes to monitor a folder would be number 5, and in the 'advanced feature' category.
Secondly, how exactly do the "latest music files" get into this monitored folder? If you manually dragged them there, then you might as well have just manually dragged them onto the itunes window. If they arrived there through any other means, that just further underscores that its an advanced feature.
There are no plugins
That is certainly not a basic feature either. And its probably the ONLY thing I sort of agree with.
I'd like iTunes to support automatically syncing with non-Apple players. I'd like iTunes to support syncing with programs other than Outlook on Windows.
[There are no] themes.
I call that a feature. I'm not 13 anymore. I am happy to let my programs to feature well designed UI, without delegating the task to other 13 year olds who variously have an unhealthy fascination with celebrities, movies, or just want everything to be some sort of gothic red and black. If anything, I think iTunes on Windows should look MORE like a windows app.
Despite the many faults, many of us continued to use iTunes because of the lack of options available.
Its few faults and many strengths actually. The biggest advantage it has over other players is that it works with =all= ipods/iphones seamlessly.
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.
Hardly a ringing endorsement if you look at either of those products.
It has support for extensions and themes ('feathers' in Songbird parlance).
Right, because inventing non-standard gimmick terminology is always a good idea. I'm glad Thunderbird has addons not 'feathers' and firefox...? 'hairs'? 'teeth'? Spare me.
Amarok: The undisputed champion among Linux music players is finally coming to OS X, thanks to due KDE 4 being ported to OS X. 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.
'reasonably stable' with a KDE4 look on OSX? Yeah that's going to create an army of converts.
Hopefully these players will gain traction among OS X users,
They won't. They will make a very small niche (self)-satisfied. That's not a bad thing, per se, mind you, but don't make more out of it than is really there.
which will finally force Apple to either step up in terms of features or open up iTunes for extensions."
See above. It won't. Even though I really do want iTunes to work with Thunderbird instead of Outlook...
So don't get a retarded proprietary music player*.
* It's not their fault you don't think before you buy.
So I guess most OSX users won't use it*.
*It's not their fault that developers don't think about why most of the people are using iTunes when they are trying to compete with iTunes.
Back in the days the software was known as SoundJam MP, iTunes had all sorts of skins and UI enhancements.
When Jeffrey Robbins, the creator of SoundJam moved to Apple, all of those exotic features were stripped off of SoundJam MP. Instead, the UI was vastly improved and the whole project was relabeled iTunes.
And, that's why iTunes is so successful. It is simple and easy to operate. You put in a CD, and almost magically, the music is now in your iTunes library. You go to the iTunes store, click a button, and there it is in iTunes.
We heard many of the same complaint with the iPod when it first came out. The iPod had no microphone, it didn't have a radio, there was no slot for a memory card. You couldn't use it as a recorder. All it could do was play MP3s. It will never sell!
But, sell it did. What Apple had demonstrated time and time again is that features don't sell. Simplicity and elegance do. There are plenty of high end packages for Mac OS X -- including SoundJam's main competitor Audion (Freely downloadable from Panic's website). However, Apple's solution is to ignore the dross and concentrate on usability.
For more information, see the story of Audion at .
I think open source contenders are failing to understand the mentality of the average Mac user, the ones that put them in the powerful position they are.
Apple wants you to 'Think Different', but not freely. They want you to think differently than Windows, but more like Apple everything.
Many people accept this, they get drafted into a specific process and the only efficient way to use OS X is to do it the way Apple intends for you to, but it's DAMNED EASY to work with and that's incredibly easy to appreciate.
Open Sourcers want freedom, options, the preemptibility that if there comes a point when something needs to change, it can be done. Mac users don't want that, they don't need it. They want their shit to work, and if you eliminate the variables, it almost always will.
Expecting Apple to open up is like expecting McDonalds to eliminate their fatty foods; What they're doing now is working for them INCREDIBLY WELL, ethics are a hard thing to propose when the process in indisputably effective.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
Monitoring a folder is the job of the OS not the App.
I have 3 Macs sharing a music folder off the house fileserver. Your excuse for why I have to manually go to each Mac and add new music after ripping it onto the server is pretty awful, especially since Amarok has this feature working.
Let me put this another way: monitoring a folder is a perfectly reasonable service for the OS to provide to applications. If OS X can't do it, then it's the only Unix I use that doesn't.
Note that Amarok takes the more sane approach of actually looking at folder contents from time to time. That might offend your purist sensibilities, but it's pretty darned handy in practice.
And mac OS has folder-actions that let you monitor a folder and add songs to any app, not just itunes.
And that works on (increasingly common) shared folders, and it knows that more files have been added since the last time it connected? Give me a break.
I'll remember this the next time a Mac user teases me for manually performing some tasks that OS X does automatically. I still have to add printers by hand, but at least I only have to do that one time. With iTunes I'm working behind the scenes every time I get new music.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?