Thursday, February 12, 2009

WINAMPs for Mac

Like many (probably?) migrating from Win based machines, I never got comfortable (and tried, for that matter) with Itunes. I really am used with Winamp's versatility in terms of what to play, when and ease of switch and cancel etc. Moreover, I DO NOT like to: copy/duplicate my files just for the sake of a player, map all my music into playlists and stuff, because I am quite flexible (from minute to minute) in what I listen and how my mood changes. Moreover, I am not interested in purchasing music from them or getting additional info on the songs beyond the title and artwork that I already have in each music directory. Thus, Itunes doesn't cut it at all for me despite its slick & sexy appearance.
In consequence, I started to search for other music players, preferably one that would be close to Winamp's capabilities.
Unfortunately, the Winamp for Mac project was abandoned around 2001; there is a player from that time but only works under Mac OS 9. So, that's a dead end.

Other players (FREE of course) that you might look at:
- Audion- http://www.panic.com/audion/download.html. A rather OK player...a bit hard to get around it but decent. Plus:1. it resembles Winamp's interface quite a bit (see the screenshot attached); 2. like Winamp it doesn't need to copy the music files into its library..which is great.
- Media Player 9 for Mac - only if you're a real fan, which I am not...so I haven't check it out. "Sporting a new brushed steel skin for Apple's newest operating system, this new version of our player opens the world of Windows Media 9 content to Macintosh users, enabling them to access the best audio and video on the web." I like the fact that this one is small (only 7 MB). Link: http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.mspx?pid=Mactopia_WMP&fid=1E974157-5031-4AC6-840A-6E07547B6AEB#viewer
- Vox 0.2.6 directly from Apple. Available at: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/audio/vox.html

No comments: