mac anticipation part 1 – software i
March 20th, 2008
The Macbook Pro has been dispatched. In a matter of days it will be mine! There are many things I am looking forward to, as well as many Windows habits I’m not looking forward to trying to kick. So lets see what these are:
Software
Of course I know that with my Mac I will be able to do everything I’m used to (and more?), only slightly differently. There will be certain things I will miss greatly though. The first is a nice little program called Winamp, which I have used for at least 8 years. I like everything about it; its simple layout, those sweet skins (having used the same ‘Flying Circles’ skin for many years), the plugins and its general functionality.
Most of all I will miss the ‘J’ and ‘Q’ functions – simply hit J on the keyboard followed by any combination of letters in either song title or artis followed by Enter to play the track.
Even better than ‘J’ is ‘Q’. Single-click on any track in the playlist followed by Q on the keyboard and that track will be queued after the currently playing track. Do this 20 times and you have your own ‘mix tape’.
Finally, I just cannot stand music stopping suddenly. Sudden silence after hitting the stop button; it just won’t do. Or that quick jump when changing tracks, or a long gap between two consecutive tracks. The music should flow. Smooth transitions. I want crossfading plugins. Now I’m not going to bad mouth it just yet in this respect as I’m not entirely sure how possible it is to enable [decent] crossfading in iTunes. Is it?
I do know that I can’t have it looking like Winamp. I saw recently something about having a ‘minimal view’, but I want to see the playlist too. I hate that it’s so largeand takes taking up most of the desktop.
I have never liked iTunes. I first used it when I had an iPod a couple of years ago. It broke. I still use it, however, for podcasts. I still don’t like it. The Apple Store is good. But when I want to listen to music I don’t want something that’s so huge and feels so bulky.
a) Winamp people – please make a version for macs.
b) Feel free to try and convince me that iTunes is good, or suggest something better.
