@HeartBurnKid, creepy morbid freak: iTunes on Windows is not all it could be, I think because of the non-standard interface. For example, there's a brief delay when you click "Play" that drives me nuts. On Mac, it's the native interface (more or less). No sluggish UI library to load, no delays.

@cperkins92: "Nice interface doesn't equal great program, and "hideous interface" doesn't equate to horrid program."

No, but a great program MUST have a nice interface. Therefore the interface is an important aspect of any program that should not be skimped upon. Just because Microsoft doesn't care about interface doesn't mean 3rd party developers can ignore it too.

Rhywun

Still think MediaMonkey is best for managing a large collection and syncing your iPod. It does EVERYTHING I need it to do; now if only MM would go cross platform.....I have Parallels installed on my Mac just so I can still use it, well, that and Picasa....

chronchameleon

@Rhywun: Another iSheep? Nice interface doesn't equal great program, and "hideous interface" doesn't equate to horrid program. It's quite subjective anyways, I liked it.

cperkins92

Ugh, that thing looks enormous. I'm shedding all my huge media players and going back to light and non-intrusive. I've fallen in love with Spider Player for just that reason. It plays and streams my music in a little corner, without taking half a minute to load up big shiny metallic screens of album art, dials, knobs, and buttons.

OX4

@Rhywun: I haven't tried the latest version, but I know that the current release of Amarok is highly customizable and offers a variety of skins. If you don't like the interface, you can customize til your heart's content.

As far as the "social crap" goes...that's your prerogative. Some of us like the Wikipedia and Last.fm features. To each his own.

@valadil: There's an option in Amarok that lets you customize the gap between tracks. You can set the time or just have it segue into the next song.

eeefresh

@Rhywun: Personally, I like the interface. Rather, I like the v1 interface; I'm not too sure on v2 based on those screenies.

And it's always felt way more responsive than iTunes did back in my Windows days (though that's not saying much; never tried the Mac version, but iTunes on Windows is crap). Plus, the scripting and plugin features are awesome (love having a lyrics script come up in the sidebar every time I play a file). The ability to auto-populate album art from Amazon is a nice plus too, as is the Last.FM integration, the MusicBrainz integration, and the ability to sync to every MP3 player on the market (including the iPod). Oh, and Magnatune store integration, as well (DRM-free is the way to be, baby!).

HeartBurnKid, creepy morbid freak

> So, as a Mac user, what does this offer over iTunes?

From the look of it, a hideous interface and a lot of "social" crap that I don't want.

Rhywun

@Tony Bullard: That was real helpful. I did read the article but, aside from the widgets, I don't see anything really to distinguish this app. Was hoping for some more help from the commenters to see if I just missed something here.

BluegrassGeek

@rabiddachshund: Playing your entire music collection is pretty easy. Under playlists there is Entire Collection double click that or drag to playlist.

Cadoo

God this is a terrible UI, using tabs alongside the screen. The feature set is cool though.

vondur

Looks great. Now they just need to add automatic silence removal and a decent ReplayGain script. K3B integration would be nice too.

smheath

I love Amarok. When I started using Ubuntu a few years ago this was one of my most favorite apps. Now that I run Ubuntu on my laptop and Vista on my main desktop I was looking for a program that was similar to Amarok. Media Monkey is kind of filling that void but when this comes out I will definitely make this my primary music app.

ichiban1081

@valadil: Strange, I have no delay between songs at all. And I'm reading them off an NTFS partition.

There might be something else going on with your system.

HeartBurnKid, creepy morbid freak

@Sensai: I'm running Gnome, and use Amarok as my primary music player. Just out of curiosity, what am I missing?

HeartBurnKid, creepy morbid freak

@ soul_grind: I'm with you on that, but ubuntu is a killer app just for being "ubuntu"

daggerx

Can I install this and just point it to my Itunes music folder to play the music or do I have to re-import it in some way? Can the two share the files?

steveand

I'm kinda torn. On the one hand I'd LOVE to have amarok on my PC, its by far the best music manager/player out there.

On the other hand, its the main killer app for linux.. so it almost seems like a shame to have it go cross-platform... oh well.

@trstn:
At the moment I'm running mediamonkey with a last.fm random playlist script... its pretty cool.
(I love MM, but I'd probably still choose Amarok over it though).

soul_grind

Unless it speeds up I think I'll have to pass. Last time I tried Amarok the delay between songs was ~5 seconds and I've not had that problem with any other player (including iTunes in VMWare).

valadil

@trstn
@Neflheim

I recently fled the Vistaster for Mac. I called Adobe up to ask about a license transfer for my CS3 Standard from Windows to Mac. It cost less than $6. I had to sign an affidavit promising to uninstall and destroy all Windows versions of the media. They then sent me a new copy of CS3 Standard for OSX.

My $200 educational license was replaced with a full commercial license. Not sure what that means but I'll be out of school by the time there is an upgrade available.

Melkor

Does this mean I can FINALLY ditch iTunes on my Mac? Oh thank god, my prayers have been answered!

mexman

Looks great. I wonder if it will still be stuck using ID3v1 tags.

Last time I tried Amarok it truncated the ends of thousands of meticulously tagged mp3s (rips from 78 RPMs) that were too long for v1. I had backups of most of them but I was not a happy camper.

When I posted for help on the Amarok forums, I discovered it was a known issue but nobody seemed to actually consider it an "issue", because hey, everybody knows Amarok uses v1 and everybody also knows v1 truncates tags after a certain length. WTF!

quarterframer

@BluegrassGeek: It's not iTunes. ;)

actionscripted

@BluegrassGeek: Um...read the article?

@ the topic: I really like that they're going cross platform. I look forward to giving this one a try.

Tony Bullard

So, as a Mac user, what does this offer over iTunes?

BluegrassGeek

Gross. Talk about bloatware.

Storkme

That's awesome. Now if only they could move away from being dependent on playlists and be able to play the entire library like iTunes, I might use it. That and being able to rip cd's.

I just wish I could KDE to work.

rabiddachshund

Beautiful ^^

Nxqd3051990

@Sensai: i use GNOME and run amarok just fine.......I don't see the problem....

superbryant

Last time I tried to install Amarok2 it was a disaster, I may have to try it again though.

sloped

@Sensai: Huh ? Why ? Just install Amarok and it'll install everything that is needed and you can run it to full extent! :)

Tuplad

@Sensai: Actually, I was running standard GNOME/Ubuntu, and Amarok installed and ran like nothing was the matter.

Kevin Purdy

@the_gank: Ugh! I'll work on getting those fixed. So sorry!

Kevin Purdy

Amarok was my favorite Linux app when I ran Ubuntu, but had to give it up when I was required to switch back to WinXP at work. So looking forward to Amarok 2 for Windows!

wayne

@Trstn
Im in the same boat.. been waiting for this for a while now.. whooo whoo!

Neflheim

Hell yes - cannot wait for this.

p.s. missed a "d" in "Podcasts" on 2nd to last paragraph ;-)

portobello_man

Wow! Looks very very good, I'll get to compiling as soon as I get home, unless that repo works for intrepid also.

Ohabu

I'm on Gnome, thus am unable to run Amarok to its full extent.

Rockin' the Rhythmbox at the moment. <3<3

Sensai

Since going back to Vista this is the one killer app that I've really really missed, almost to the point that I'm willing to give up on dreamweaver and photohop just to get it back. The Last.fm linked random playlist is just amazing. Really can't wait for this to come out for windows.

trstn

The links to the larger version of the sshot are broken.....Kevin.

the_gank

Haven't used Amarok for a while - am using Banshee at the moment - but this looks great, might tempt me back!

jerichokb

Wow, what a typical horrid Linux user interface!

Try this: Hire a developer who normally makes Mac apps. Ask him nicely and maybe he'll help you design an interface that doesn't suck.

illtron

I use and prefer Gnome, but there are a few KDE apps that I just can't live without. Amarok is one of them (K3B is another). For my needs, it is by far the best media player that I have ever used on any platform.

I have a fairly big music collection (about 12,000 mp3s on a network drive). Amarok indexes and browses them all super fast (even without using an SQL backend) and I find the library interface to be very intuitive and clear (and it doesn't try to move and rename all your files like bloody iTunes). Plus you can edit tags, lookup lyrics and info, and do a lot of other useful things whenever the moment strikes you.

Anyone who hasn't tried Amarok and has a big music library should definitely give it a shot.

zoomZAP

YESSSS!!!!! no more iTunes on my mac!!!

quickf3d

Banshee has been my choice for a while now. Amarok has traditionally annoyed me with the interface, but this looks a lot better. I may have to give it a try again. I just wish all of these products were cross platform.

mrosedal

@quarterframer: The documentation is pretty iffy. I asked the help forum what the difference was between transferring a playlist to a DAP, and syncing a playlist to a DAP, and no-one could help. In fact they got a bit sniffy and said, "it's obvious". Huh.

muteboy

OS X? Really? That could be the second really usable audio player for the Mac. Only iTunes is a bit ... monopolistic. Fantastic! :-) I am so looking forward to test that once it's done.

the-me

I'm a big fan of Amarok, but I just cannot stand the new interface. It's horrible, clunky and messy. I don't see what the problem with the current layout is! I love my massive playlist section and the sidebar which lets me get to everything I could ever want. I access Wikipedia information when I need it, not all the time.

christophski

Amarok's major fail: no AmazonMP3 integration.

Slugicide

I still love 1.** release! It is the best and clearly the easiest to use. That is what makes amarok the best mp3 player and handler ever! But i don't think this is what the final should look like at all.
For example where is the visualization i have come to love so much?
Where is the amazon cover fetcher?
where is the devices tab?
Does it still use SQLite database?
Clearly this is far from finished and is just the backbone. They will and must include all the cool stuff from the previous release!

Gmanpawned

@Amarok Dev team. Excellent. Thanks for cross platforming it. My fave media app comes to Windows.

pobox90210

Eh..instead of making it bigger and more bloated, could you make it smaller, better and more winamp-like, please?

btdown

So after trying Ubuntu I was driven once more back into the "evil" arms of Microsoft b/c of the lack of iPod support for my iPod Touch. It was supposed to be as simple as (ipod-convenience: ironic naming as you'll see later): jailbreak your ipod, set up ssh, specify a password, install amarok and tell amarok what that password is. and then you get an iPod that syncs. Except it. Didn't. Work. At all. When I could get it to transfer songs across to the touch it would invariably kill the album art - or mess up a playlist or some other such inexplicable nonsense. Most of the time it just wouldn't sync, period let alone transfer files across. Deleting files was a pain. I'd have to (hard) reboot the device a number of times. That's the problem - w/ a device as ubiquitous as the iPod-Touch/iPhone you need to have a piece of software that can sync reliably and expectedly if that piece of software is meant to work. If this isn't a core-feature. I'd call it a top-5 on the "To Be Implemented" list. Funny how a stupid thing like an external device (and poor integration) can drive a poor sap from one OS to another (well not really just that but . L Enough w/ the apple product - now onto the software itself. I found Amarok to be "clunky" and have a poor UI. Configuration Menus were predictably located but still managed to mystify you with providing options that didn't help you do what you wanted to (specify a music library on external disk for example). I have an external drive w/ my music on it. This seems to be the easiest way of sharing (say) my music library (iTunes and other unprotected tracks) across multiple computers as well as videos and archives of files. Unfortunately, Amarok had a dickens of a time displaying my music library and allowing me to play from it. Mind you, not all (perhaps 60%) of my music is protected AAC format so it's understandable if it would choke on the files whilst trying to display or play them but even the stuff that wasn't protected (straight mp3) was difficult to work with. If I remember correctly the search functionality (for finding tracks) wasn't very useful (perhaps this was due to the size of the library - X number of gigs?). I found the album art display to be obscured, unreliable and downright broken (displayed the wrong image or none when an image existed?) which is horrible for a music player software in 2008. I'm very pleased to see that the developer(s) have addressed that in the new screenshots. I hope this is much improved. I hope this works better for some folks but it was the nail in the coffin of Ubuntu for me (straw that broke the camel's back, etc. etc).

SurupaTaygete

Good tunes! :)

Cheekyal

I know I'm responding to this way late, but for those of you who were curious as to why Amarok wasn't working correctly on my GNOME:

Apparently, I'm in the minority. It just seems a little slow to start up and a little slow going all around. Maybe my machine and it just aren't getting along, though...

I'll try it out again.

Sensai

I'm so glad that I'll finally be able to use amarok on all my computers.

rhololkeolke

@rabiddachshund: playing the entire library? I guess this is the simplest dynamic playlist ;)

mathroc