This may sound like a project that will never come true. However, with a little bit of time, teamwork, and effort the folks on Neowin can really make a good music app. for Mac OS X.

How?

There are a lot of music apps. for Mac. However, there are many apps. that are missing features that are true necessities. For example, iTunes is great, but it's bloated full of stuff that are rarely used by many users. Another example, would be those commercial products, we can't afford.

If you combine features from every popular Mac music app. and pack it all into one simple user interface such as foobar, it can really make a difference when using a Mac. Especially, when it's made for open source use.

A great example is VLC, it's simple, compact, and plays all videos without any hassle to download codecs from websites. It would be great to have a simple application just like VLC, but it's focus is playing music on a Mac.

So, anyone willing to unite and work on it?

It would be great.

Thanks.

You can actually play mp3s and other music in VLC. It's pretty handy.

yea, you can, but he is asking for something LIKE vlc which FOCUSSES on music, just like foobar but especially for mac.

i think its a nice idea, although im an itunes user for years and i love it. but if thered be a real handy, little, good looking, not-so-hungry app that seems appearing to me... why not giving it a try.

hopefully some coders here have enough time and fun to do something like this.

i would give it a shot but i love itunes and i dont see much of a market for this

iTunes isnt really bloated, its very fast on a mac, couldn't ask for anything more really

Yeah, iTunes pretty much covers what a person needs music wise.

I wish, Winamp would be made for the mac again.
Or else xmms ported native to Mac Os X, but that won't happen soon.

Just because iTunes offers many features doesn't mean it's bloated. The interface is very clean and you can disable services such as Radio, Podcasts, iTunes Store, etc. if you don't need them.

But I agree, beyond iTunes Mac OS X lacks good music players.

That tends to be the case for most Mac software. One or two great apps to do a specific task instead of 50-100 mediocre ones like you tend to have on Windows or Linux. Quality vs. quantity.

I found one free music application from Panic software.

http://www.panic.com/audion/

looks like it hasnt been updated in ages

The application has been discontinued because Adion couldn't compete with iTunes.


Yep. It never bothered me. Like you said (at least what I assume you meant) the average quality of Mac OS applications is much better than what you come across on Windows and Linux.

Roxio Toast Titanium is living proof.

I would love to contribute to this and perhaps make a mockup.

Is the possibility of kernal streaming a possibility for the mac?

*Dreams of a Cocoa WinAmp-ish app for Mac OS X*


Though I love iTunes, and it's always been everything I needed. I'd still love to at least try a fully native WinAmp-like app for Mac OS X. XMMS, unfortunately, needs X11 to run. Not very practical, in my opinion.

i personally never really liked Winamp because of the skinning.....it was a great app otherwise

one replacement for itunes in the future may be http://www.songbirdnest.com/

although they already look very "similar"....

Since switching in late November, I have been seriously missing Winamp. Running it in Parallel's Coherence mode just doesn't compare to running it natively. Right before the switch, I made a few mockups of an OS X-styled skin for Winamp that might make a pretty decent native app. If there is enough interest in something like this, I'm sure we could get a small team (3-4 people?) together to work on it.

Any takers?

Doubt it. It uses the same horrible technique as Firefox to render it's interface and it's slow as hell as a result. It won't ever come even close to iTunes if it doesn't become a truly native Mac OS X application.

I for one never really liked WinAmp, always used Windows Media Player and after that iTunes (first on Windows XP, later on Mac OS X).

Songbird would be awesome if it wasnt for that skinning engine

Can't one use Foobar trough X11?

Edit, I'm sorry I meant that CrossOver app. But I realise that's not really the same so never-mind

Just found out that MPlayer for Mac OS X isn't dead. I was keeping track of the wrong site.

http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html

Not entirely related to this thread, but it's a pretty nice replacement for VLC. I find VLC a bit too unstable lately.

Camino has a pretty nice GUI: http://www.macupdate.com/images/screens/up...ed/7548_scr.png

If you make it more compact with the same GUI, it would really look nice and simple.

http://cogosx.sourceforge.net/

You can download the XMMS source so you could port it to a native OS X App

You say iTunes is bloated, but you want to combine features from every popular app into one app. You don't think that would make your app even more bloated?

An application becomes bloated when all features are stuffed together in a poorly designed interface. Toast 8 for example combines numerous features in one single window without becoming bloated, where it's Windows counterpart has multiple applications for the same tasks. So as long as your interface works well and there isn't a noticeable performance hit, an application can pack a lot.

This sounds like a great idea but most mac owners have iPods and they only sync with iTunes so unless this thing can somehow sync with an iPod i most probably wont use it because i wont need 2 music players.

Although as people say installing X11 is a bit of an inconvenience to run XMMS on OSX, having a slim Winamp-ish music player may be a good reason to go through all of that.

http://voidin.blogspot.com/2006/07/install...-on-osx_07.html

CPU resource-wise, I think it will be just as intensive as iTunes, if not more, due to the fact that you have to run that X11 layer to make it work.

It would be great if someone pulled an iTunes lite of sorts. Just to play music, playlist support nothing else..

Talk about re-inventing the wheel... we already have the best music app in the world (iTunes), but it would be interesting to see your results.

That isn't such a bad idea. Especially if it can read off the iTunes Library so you don't have to mange two. But then again can't one just use the iTunes mini player? It's basically the same thing.

On my G4 Mac iTunes uses about ±8-9% CPU and 28,80 MB of real memory. It goes slightly up when using it in "full window mode". It makes a drop to ±6-7% CPU when closing the window entirely, but no changes in real memory.

Is iTunes' footprint really that big compared to Windows Media Player 11 or WinAmp on Windows XP? Using similar hardware that is. I imagine things might be a little different on a Core2Duo.

PS
Guess it was only a matter of time before someone copied my sig frame.

I have to agree with the OP, Winamp is the one app that I've spent the most time and effort looking to replace. The one I miss the most. It may not be bloated to some, but iTunes is more than I need in a music player.

I've tried compiling XMMS, it works but X11 isn't exactly speedy, and the sound pops and cracks a bit...but any Winamp 2 skin works with it. Tried Audion but as has been said it's no longer supported.

I use VLC for audio streams and that seems to work well for me now. But we really need a decent, skinnable audio player with EQ and playlist capability, nothing more.

Does AmaroK have a mac port?

http://amarok.kde.org/wiki/On_OS_X

The UI is that of a typical Linux application.

It's called iTunes. It's currently best of breed. Really nothing better out there.

You've got a mac, you've got OS X . . . yet you find iTunes somewhow doesn't measure up to your expectations?

Gimme a break. (there's also Songbird, but you'll just end up calling that bloated.)

I mean, you bought a Mac, at least you talk like you did. And then you complain about commercial products?? LOL, the $400 Dell lineup is over there. Please go stand in it. Then you can install whatever shoddy freeware music player you like from Download.com.

Mmmm nice and on topic. Not to mention helpful!

Yeah, how dare he criticize iTunes. Shame on him!

If we can get foobar though that'd be pretty sweet. Amarok wouldn't be bad either but it looks like crap right now.

Seems nothing is ever good enough.

itunes is too xyz. VLC is too abc. There's already a bunch of choices but they don't fit the exact personal tastes of a particular user.

Maybe the user should simply get accustomed to using itunes and learn to live with it and love it instead of being stuck in a state of dissatisfaction. There are always other platforms that offer simple music players, such as Windows and Linux.

Someone doesn't like Mac OS X' default media player and should, as a direct result, switch to a whole different platform. That sounds totally realistic and reasonable.

Some people just don't like iTunes and rather use something else. Maybe you should get accustomed to the fact that different people have different needs instead of selling a faith that all Mac users must unite and use iTunes or be exiled to a different operating system.

Now let's get back on topic.

Ok. So who's gonna code this?

I dunno but i think a perfect music player would be iTunes but slipped down like iPod intergration library just without all the extra's i think that would a be agreat idea.

With the amount of snobbery thrown around in this thread, it's no wonder they deride us. Switch to another OS because he doesn't like iTunes? Please

There's iTunes, VLC, XMMS (source), MPlayer(?), Songbird. Those are the major ones off the top of my head. If a person can't choose from among all these . . . then maybe it's time to drastically reevaluate one's standards and give the existing ones a fair shake.

And as for iTunes . . . maybe we should try to highlight the reasons it *should* be used - show some pride and promote it a bit. Otherwise, we're all just spinning our wheels, unless someone here decides to take the time to code a new app.

I want to know what is specifically, exactly, descriptively wrong with iTunes, running on current hardware. Give me some concrete arguments and I'll tip my hat and bow out.

I've been searching for an Itunes "Alternative", It's preformance on my mac is slow and unpredictable. Im in the process of compiling XMMS right now (which will probably run slower)

Why does it perform so poorly on your mac?

So what are the really important features people would want? What would it take to draw people away from Itunes?

Can you play itunes bought songs in other media players? I think it would be interesting to see what neowin could come up with

• XMMS - No native Mac OS X version
• VLC/MPlayer - Not real music players, don't have much to offer and are mostly meant for video playback
• Songbird - Extremely slow, buggy, doesn't have any Mac OS X specific features (QuickDraw/Aqua), poorly designed interface.

So none of those really qualify as an iTunes replacement.

Yeah, we should all just sit on our rump and be content with life as it is. What's the point of development? Creativity? The pursuit to better ourselves and the tools we use? I mean what's the point?

WHAT'S THE POINT IN LIVING!!!!??? WHAT'S IT ALL MEANNN!!!!1111

Hehe

Hmm...

Keeping it 'lite', unbloated, but including necessary features.

iPod Sync
Drag and Drop (transfer)
Drop and play

That's all I can think of.