In one of my last updates on this blog (Am I really going to sell out and use iTunes?), I pondered switching to iTunes:
So, when you add things up,that means that I have to use iTunes for a lot of the functionality that I want from my iPhone. Which probably means I’ll end up using iTunes as my default media player from now on.
On further reflection – and after trying to use iTunes as a media player – I have gone running away from it. iTunes sucks ass (no offense to my friends and family who have to use iTunes). It’s a CPU and memory hog, it’s counter-intuitive, not user friendly, and seems to be written specifically so users cannot configure it to their liking. (Actually, since it is an Apple product, it almost definitely is.)
So now I gladly move back to my media player of choice: Amarok 1.4! (Screenshot above) There are very few things I dislike (really, it’s hard to think of anything I dislike), but plenty of things to love. Easy playlist generation, separate views of the Library from the playlist that one has running, very flexible sorting of the files shown in the library, logical groupings for playlists and podcasts.
Other features that I love:
- Amarok has one huge, huge feature that iTunes is lacking: dynamic library tracking. Delete a file on the disk, Amarok automatically removes it from its library. Rename the file, and Amarok updates its library with the new location (without losing ratings information!).
- More flexible ratings system. Amarok is one of the few media library packages that allows rating a track with half-stars. I use 3.5 stars as the baseline for most of my smart playlists. In iTunes (and most other media managers), you can only use half-stars. This is *huge* for me!
That leave the issue of iPod/iPhone syncing. As I mentioned in my previous entry, there just aren’t any Linux apps that can sync everything I want to sync on my iPhone (Apps, ringtones, video podcasts, playlists, etc.) Which means I have to keep a virtual Windows XP machine with iTunes at the ready. I create playlists in Amarok, then export them into an iTunes-compatible format, then use iTunes to transfer them to the iPhone. *voila*!
(As an aside, I put together a short bash script to make the playlist conversion. it is:
#!/bin/bash
sed 's/\/music/M\:/' "$1" | sed 's/\//\\/g' - > win_"$1"
Simple, but I loves me some sed. 
