iTunes for Windows?

[flap]

quote:Originally posted by cocoamix:
Steve Jobs said iTunes for Windows would be released by the end of the year. That's a long time to wait, but I think it will be worth it. I would love to be able to listen to a stream of my Mac at home from my PC at work through iTunes.

I don't really understand what iTunes is about, but if you're just talking about streaming tracks from your Mac then there's no reason why you couldn't easily do that now with a web-server on the Mac and a copy of winamp on the PC.

[Faust]

quote:Oh balogna. I'm sure that if there was a WMP, IE, MS Office, etc. for Linux there would be alot of Linux users installing the software.

Sorry to disapoint you but:

Why would I install Windows Media Player?  HELLO!!!  WMP sucks!  If it was _good_ I might install it, "Microsoft hatred" or not.  Xine is better - always will be.

Yes I would install Internet Explorer...  excuse me for a minute will I add this rider:ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha !!!
           
What kind of moron would voluntarily install Internet Explorer!  I mean it's what, only the worst browser ever?  Even a die hard Windows fanatic like you would have to admit that IE sucks cheese, and sucks cheese well. Come on, IE!

MS Office.  Hmm. This one might actually get installed... IF it was faster, IF it wasn't so bloated and IF the paper clip was permanently removed and IF the "for kids" look was removed and IF I could be sure that everyone would be able to read my documents and IF I didnt have to upgrade the thing every year to keep on understanding other peoples documents.  

Lets face it, Microsoft software sucks.  The reason why they dont make Linux versions is because not enough Linux users would be stupid enough to use them!

[Faust]

IF windows media player is so good then why does EVERYONE use winamp?

Oh and if IE is so good maybe you would like to click on some of the links around here...  the ones that give you a free cup holder.  

[Zombie9920]

quote:Originally posted by Faust:
IF windows media player is so good then why does EVERYONE use winamp?

EVERYONE don't use Winamp. I used to use Winamp back in the day....but Windows Media Player 9 is so damn good that I won't ever go back to Winamp. The taskbar player, the interface, the full screen scroll off video controls, the Tru-Bassand WoW Effects on top of the equalizer, the ability to recover everything about the album of the song you are listening to(icluding album art), the ability to quickly, easily and reliably burn CD's from the media player(can burn from WMA, MP3, Wav and Ogg(with the appropriate plugin), the online music store(like iTunes), the visualizations support, the Plus Speaker Enhancements, etc. are more than enough for WMP to beat out Winamp hands down.

Look at the results from this poll.

http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?s=91ffefd9a363515bb889a729d8b88c17&act=ST&f=59&t=68519

It looks like there are more WMP users than Winamp users there. Am I surprised? No...not at all. Winamp is just primative(as is Mplayer, Xine, etc.).

[ May 01, 2003: Message edited by: Zombie9920 ]

[Zombie9920]

Oh, did I forget to mention that WMP 9 can burn CD's in Sonys' HighMAT CD filesystem? Not many media players or CD Burining apps(that I know of) can burn in HighMAT.

[flap]

quote:EVERYONE don't use Winamp. I used to use Winamp back in the day....but Windows Media Player 9 is so damn good that I won't ever go back to Winamp. The taskbar player, the interface, the full screen scroll off video controls, the Tru-Bassand WoW Effects on top of the equalizer, the ability to recover everything about the album of the song you are listening to(icluding album art), the ability to quickly, easily and reliably burn CD's from the media player(can burn from WMA, MP3, Wav and Ogg(with the appropriate plugin), the online music store(like iTunes), the visualizations support, the Plus Speaker Enhancements, etc. are more than enough for WMP to beat out Winamp hands down.

This is why so much Microsoft software is shit. Microsoft and its users still don't get that a good piece of software should be a machete, not a swiss army knife. I use XMMS to listen to music because it can do the following:

Play sound files

(actually it can do a bit more than that but it's not an entire operating system like mediaplayer tries to be)

I use cdrecord to burn cds because it can burn cds. The reason why Mediaplayer is such an inelegant, bloated piece of crap is because it can do all that stuff you've just listed. Maybe in the next version WMP will have an entire SQL database engine built into it so you have something else to shout about, and so it takes another 10 minutes to start.

[Zombie9920]

quote:Originally posted by flap:


This is why so much Microsoft software is shit. Microsoft and its users still don't get that a good piece of software should be a machete, not a swiss army knife. I use XMMS to listen to music because it can do the following:

Play sound files

(actually it can do a bit more than that but it's not an entire operating system like mediaplayer tries to be)

I use cdrecord to burn cds because it can burn cds. The reason why Mediaplayer is such an inelegant, bloated piece of crap is because it can do all that stuff you've just listed. Maybe in the next version WMP will have an entire SQL database engine built into it so you have something else to shout about, and so it takes another 10 minutes to start.

Some people like having a Swiss army knife. I'd rather install a 8.4 MB media player that can do it all than install a 2.5 MB media player to play Audio, a 6-10 MB media player to play video, a 3MB addon to the audio media player to give it visualization support, a 1MB addon to give the Audio player the ability to be minimized into the taskbar...if the media player has a taskbar plugin(the video player still won't have the taskbar capability), and so on.

A person saves time and hassle if he/she can do everything they want to do with one media player with out of the box capabilities to do it all.

If WMP is so bloated then why is it only 8.4MB for Windows XP? MusicMAtch is like 30MB, RealOne is like 16 or 17MB. WMP is not bloated. It is actually a pretty quick media player. If you really think that 8.4MB is blaoted you need to get off of the 2GB Hard drive/32MB of Ram computer.

8.4MB isn't shit on a 120GB hard drive and 768MB of RAM.

[ May 01, 2003: Message edited by: Zombie9920 ]

[Faust]

Drugs.  They are bad bad things.

The Sony whatever the heck brand of CD burning and the ogg burning are they only interesting features I can see.  What is so good about high MAT?  More space/faster?  I can burn oggs in linux btw so unless this high MAT turns out to be really killer thing WMP still sucks.
Not to mention that you can have winamp open without losing 90% of your screen estate.
online music store - cough, P2P, cough, music CD better than downloads, cough, cough
the visualizations support - um, who would be sad enough to just sit there staring at swirling colors while listening to music?  oh and xmms can do those "things" too btw, not that you would want it too
easily and reliably burn CD's from the media player - not many OS's dont support cd burning these days.  CD burning isnt the defining glory that it used to be, get over it.  can it record DVDs?  I dont think so...
oh and speaker effects/wow enhancements suck.  This actually isnt anti WMP, all software based equalizers cant handle distortless audio modification.  what you want is a hardware amplifier, software amping is only useful for making el cheapo headphones get a louder (although horribly distorted) bass response, its the same in linux and windows, s/ware amping sucks.
oh and have you read the WMP9 EULA?  The one that says you give MS the right to upload "revocation lists" to your computer?    
Oh and I know winamp is crap for videos, thats why i dont use it.  Also it wont run under linux but hey.  Oh and Xine isnt primitive boyo, you've never used it anyway so how would you know?

[Faust]

MusicMAtch is like 30MB, RealOne is like 16 or 17MB.

also music match is even crapper than WMP.  which is of course saying a *LOT*.
realplayer... lets not go there.
is there any good windows movie player???

[Faust]

Its not so much that the code is bloated (even if it is) it's that the interface is bloated with all the crap that it does.  I mean really that is a butt ugly interface.

[Faust]

quote:Look at the results from this poll

The poll on the "neowin" pro MS website?
At fuckmicrosoft we dig the boot into Bill.
At pro MS sites like neowin they lick his arse.
What else but MS would win a poll on an MS forum?
Find an independent poll - that I'll believe.

[Zombie9920]

quote:Originally posted by Faust:
Drugs.  They are bad bad things.

The Sony whatever the heck brand of CD burning and the ogg burning are they only interesting features I can see.  What is so good about high MAT?  More space/faster?  I can burn oggs in linux btw so unless this high MAT turns out to be really killer thing WMP still sucks.
Not to mention that you can have winamp open without losing 90% of your screen estate.
online music store - cough, P2P, cough, music CD better than downloads, cough, cough
the visualizations support - um, who would be sad enough to just sit there staring at swirling colors while listening to music?  oh and xmms can do those "things" too btw, not that you would want it too
easily and reliably burn CD's from the media player - not many OS's dont support cd burning these days.  CD burning isnt the defining glory that it used to be, get over it.  can it record DVDs?  I dont think so...
oh and speaker effects/wow enhancements suck.  This actually isnt anti WMP, all software based equalizers cant handle distortless audio modification.  what you want is a hardware amplifier, software amping is only useful for making el cheapo headphones get a louder (although horribly distorted) bass response, its the same in linux and windows, s/ware amping sucks.
oh and have you read the WMP9 EULA?  The one that says you give MS the right to upload "revocation lists" to your computer?    
Oh and I know winamp is crap for videos, thats why i dont use it.  Also it wont run under linux but hey.  Oh and Xine isnt primitive boyo, you've never used it anyway so how would you know?

Oh, but I can have WMP open and have my full viewing area available to me(the taskbar player is god ;P). Sonys' HighMAT is a Digital CD file system(standard Audio CD's are Analog). The problem is, there are not many HighMAT compatible CD players out yet.

I have my computer hooked up to my Bose 5.1 Surround Home Theater(I have it connected from the RCA out of my Audigy Drive). I'll just say, the TruBass and WoW Effects make a big difference in the Audio quality and the Bass Quality.

Audio on Winamp sounds ackkk on the Home Theater system when compared to WMP 9.

For the not many OSes don't support CD buring statement. That is true. But it is a pain in the ass to burn CD's in Linux...period. WMP maes it easy for even a grandma to burn an Audio CD, a Data CD, HighMAT CD(For Data CD's I prefer Nero myself...but it isn't as easy for a grandma as WMP).

Actually, WMP 9 CAN burn DVD's. It won't give you the option to copy to a DVD unless it detects a DVD-RAM/DVD-RW drive though.

AS an Audiophile I will just say that music sounds like shit on every Linux media player I have tried on my Home Theater. I'll take WMP and all of it's audio enhancements over the open source, featureless crap anyday.

[flap]

quote:A person saves time and hassle if he/she can do everything they want to do with one media player with out of the box capabilities to do it all.

Why stop there? Why not include a flight simulator as well just in case you fancy a game of that (as with Excel 97)?

Just because you want to do all of those things at some point, it doesn't mean that it's sensible to have them in one application and loaded into memory at the same time. For example, I always have XMMS open but only infrequently watch videos, for which I can open MPlayer and then close it when I'm done. I don't want mplayer, and xmms, and xmms' visualisations, and cdrecord, and xcdroast all in memory all the time as I'm usually not using their functionality.

[KernelPanic]

I like xmms, it plays my cd's/mp3's ogg's etcetera. Personally that is all I want and need.
Occasionally I expand it's capabilities with a plugin of a few hundred K's.
At the end of the day all I want to do is play my damn music, I think alot of people are like that. All these bells and whistles end up unused and people just like to know they have them and tell their buddies about them.
I also like seperate programs, I like the small and functional approach. Keeps everything clean, lowers system overhead and allows greater scope for changing bits and bobs.
Anyway that's my personal stance, just wanted to chip it in to show zombie that people want different things. There is nothing wrong with that and it's the reason that there are so many computer programs.

[Faust]

You call yourself an audiophile and you use a dodgy bose "out of the box" speaker setup hooked up to (ack! computer based amps! eew!)  bose make good speakers but out of the box man, wrong!  Oh and the comp amps do make a big difference in bass quality and audio quality - they make it worse.  The "better" sound you're hearing is distort.  What you want is some $200+ headphones with a horizontal frequency response graph from 20 to 20k hertz, then you have decent sound!  That said at least an audigy is better than the crap onboards i assumed you were using.  BTW creative make free software drivers for all their sound products and you're using them.  Does that make you feel dirty?    

>The problem is, there are not many HighMAT
>compatible CD players out yet.
So they're useless like I thought?