Amarok on the Way

Whew! I was afraid it was being inactively developed!

I've been running Amarok on OS X for a while now, having compiled it from the Fink repositories. I was surprised--despite having never compiled a piece of code in my life and having a miniscule amount of command line experience, it was a relatively painless experience. All the KDE dependencies make for a lengthy compile (I left it on overnight on my MacBook) but it was well worth it.

Songbird looks promising, but the problem with it for me (apart from all the bugs) is that the main reason I need an iTunes alternative is because I have a lot of music in the lossless FLAC format, which iTunes/QuickTime doesn't support. And seeing as how Songbird (for now) is using the QuickTime engine for playback, it does me no good. Apart from lightweight players like VLC and Cog that have no library function, Amarok is the only music jukebox that supports FLAC on OS X as far as I can tell.

Unfortunately, Songbird sucks, and will probably suck for some time. AmaroK, however, is really cool.

Amarok is by far and away the app I miss the most when I moved from Linux to OSX (followed by Konqueror as a file manager). It's handling of music I always found preferable to iTunes.

I agree that Amarok is so much better than iTunes.

Another app to look for is SongBird wich is currently being developed. It's interface is similar to iTunes but has many additional features that Apple probably will never implment (probably because of fears of a backlash from the RIAA etc).

It should also be noted that both Amarok and Songbird are Open Source Software (OSS). In my view, OSS is so much better than closed software like iTunes (which by design limit features etc and try to lock you in to the Apple world).

When Amarok and Songbird become available for the Mac, people should give them a try. You may be pleasantly surprised and end up switching away from iTunes.

Rob

This is fantastic! Amarok and digiKam are the KDE apps I miss most since I switched this summer. Amarok blows iTunes away in features and non-suckitude.