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It imported my little "other" iTunes Library of about 1,500 songs, albeit with some stalls. However, for my main 20,000 song library it just crashes out. I hat

It imported my little "other" iTunes Library of about 1,500 songs, albeit with some stalls. However, for my main 20,000 song library it just crashes out. I hate to say it considering the other feedback, but I'm not a fan of the UI. The giant words instead of icons, off colour and sort of grafted on now playing box, and no ability to hide the "browser" all put me off pretty strongly. Integrated preferences was a bad choice, too IMO. That's a good lazy solution for an app like Chrome to support all platforms, but for a proper OS X app I see no reason to avoid a standard prefs window. Prefs shouldn't be given equal prominence to actual application functions. In fact, because you are using words instead of icons and "Preferences" is such a long word, you are actually giving it greater prominence. I'm lost as to the purpose of the sidebar. I get that it jumps to the currently playing album, but why can I scroll around to other unrelated albums? It's like there are two completely independent browsing frames in this window. Plus I can delete things in the other frame with the "x" button, but they just go away temporarily until I start playing a song again... I just don't get it. Honestly, besides startup time, iTunes does everything this does better and it does it with a more refined UI. I know the standard response is "great job! can't wait to see the progress!" but I feel like I need to be honest. There are a million iTunes replacements and companions out there. They all suffer from requiring more effort to manage two music playing apps and offer dubious benefit. They all have small dedicated user bases but they never take the platform by storm like they seem to be hoping to. I'll keep it around as I would like to see if it can handle a 20,000 song library with future updates, but I don't see myself using it over iTunes. Sorry. EDIT - Before you reply about the draw of features like extended filetype support, last.fm and queuing, consider that almost every iTunes replacement/companion (and there literally are dozens of them) has these features already. That's also a reason to take comments like "Can't stand iTunes bloat, definitely interested!" with a grain of salt. If these people were actually receptive to change, they most likely would have switched to an alternative long ago.

overcyn 15y ago
The sidebar is a "now playing" playlist and I think the most interesting part of the app. When you double click a song it copies the current library into the sidebar. It lets you edit the order things get played, or what gets shuffled. You can drag and drop songs in and out of it. You can hide the browser by right clicking the header and selecting 'hidden'.
- shinratdr 15y ago
  > The sidebar is a "now playing" playlist and I think the most interesting part of the app. Why is mine filled with things that aren't playing and I haven't played? If that is its intended purpose, then it needs to convey that a little better by not filling it with other unrelated content for no reason. As someone who rarely uses sub-lists and typically just flips around the main library, copying the entire existing library to the sidebar isn't a great idea. I get it for playlists and other subsections, not so much for the entire unfiltered library. > You can hide the browser by right clicking the header and selecting 'hidden'. Good call, although this is a UI issue in and of itself. No function like that should be hidden behind a right click, something many Mac OS X users don't even know how to do.
  - overcyn 15y ago
    I'm having trouble putting it in words. Maybe thats a bad sign. Its kind of like the iTunes DJ but not really. I can tell you that nothing in there is unrelated. Imagine the main library is a completely separate entity from the 'player'. The music player plays from the sidebar. You fill the sidebar with songs from the library. And yeah I probably should add a menu item for hiding the browser.
    - shinratdr 15y ago
      I got that in a second reading, and I edited my comment accordingly, here is the relevant bit: > As someone who rarely uses sub-lists and typically just flips around the main library, copying the entire existing library to the sidebar isn't a great idea. I get it for playlists and other subsections, not so much for the entire unfiltered library. I guess it's not so simple if the app is built around that concept. I always use my main library and rarely have an urge to structure a queue, so maybe it's just not the app for me.

overcyn 15y ago

The sidebar is a "now playing" playlist and I think the most interesting part of the app. When you double click a song it copies the current library into the sidebar. It lets you edit the order things get played, or what gets shuffled. You can drag and drop songs in and out of it. You can hide the browser by right clicking the header and selecting 'hidden'.

shinratdr 15y ago
> The sidebar is a "now playing" playlist and I think the most interesting part of the app. Why is mine filled with things that aren't playing and I haven't played? If that is its intended purpose, then it needs to convey that a little better by not filling it with other unrelated content for no reason. As someone who rarely uses sub-lists and typically just flips around the main library, copying the entire existing library to the sidebar isn't a great idea. I get it for playlists and other subsections, not so much for the entire unfiltered library. > You can hide the browser by right clicking the header and selecting 'hidden'. Good call, although this is a UI issue in and of itself. No function like that should be hidden behind a right click, something many Mac OS X users don't even know how to do.
- overcyn 15y ago
  I'm having trouble putting it in words. Maybe thats a bad sign. Its kind of like the iTunes DJ but not really. I can tell you that nothing in there is unrelated. Imagine the main library is a completely separate entity from the 'player'. The music player plays from the sidebar. You fill the sidebar with songs from the library. And yeah I probably should add a menu item for hiding the browser.
  - shinratdr 15y ago
    I got that in a second reading, and I edited my comment accordingly, here is the relevant bit: > As someone who rarely uses sub-lists and typically just flips around the main library, copying the entire existing library to the sidebar isn't a great idea. I get it for playlists and other subsections, not so much for the entire unfiltered library. I guess it's not so simple if the app is built around that concept. I always use my main library and rarely have an urge to structure a queue, so maybe it's just not the app for me.