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."

Re:Feature Creep is not a Feature

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Feature Creep is not a Feature

[Anonymous Coward]

Once, my Litestep desktop got attention from a chick, who I eventually slept with. So yeah. It happens.

Re:Try mpd (music player daemon)

[TheModelEskimo]

I like MOCP (Music On Console Player). I recently had to do music for a local skit night-type thing and I found it fast, unobtrusive, and hilariously scary to everybody who walked by. Number of kids who touched my laptop with that thing taking up the screen? Zero. :-)

Re:Themes?

[Hatta]

I'm reminded of this comment sent to jwz [jwz.org]:

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.

Re: attractive woman

[ColdWetDog]

isn't that a collection of beautiful UI?

No, just a bunch of symlinks.

Re:Themes?

[mrchaotica]

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!

Basic features

[hobbit]

A feature as basic as monitoring a folder and adding the latest music files to the library is unavailable in iTunes.

Luckily, though, it's built into the operating system!

Re:Basic feature?

[Jason Earl]

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.

Re:Lacking Support

[jon3k]

hahaha so you're the guy that bought the zune huh? no seriously though, it does still support every other apple ipod.

Re:Feature Creep is not a Feature

[Doggabone]

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

"Yes you can! Yes you can!"