socialmedian: Why Apple Should Be Worried About Songbird

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Why Apple Should Be Worried About Songbird

Source: ReadWriteWeb

Dec 04, 2008

Summary

Earlier this week, the open-source music player built on Mozilla technology, Songbird, finally made its 1.0 release. After being in development for two years, this version feels like the kind of solid media player we've been expecting and hoping for all along. Although nothing is entirely bug-free, this release worked smoothly, with both performance and stability seeming greatly improved. Combine that with its extendibility through the the use of add-ons, and you'll find Songbird has a lot of promise as a worthwhile iTunes replacement.

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What We Liked

When we looked at Songbird in the past, many readers were quick to point out the player's sluggish experience, tendency to crash, and bugs. Whatever negative experiences you had in the past that drove you away from the software, now is the time to get it another shot.

This time around, the player felt fast, lightweight, and stable. It imported our iTunes library without a hitch, even the DRM-protected purchases and the accompanying metadata.

As we played tracks, an add-on called mashTape, one of the six defa

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Comments (6)

Marcel,

Dec 04, 2008

"What Songbird delivers is something Apple can't: a more open version of iTunes that runs on PC, Mac, and Linux machines. Apple's locked-down and closed iTunes player lets Songbird comfortably find its niche as the open, alternative music player, much as Firefox became the alternative web browser. "

Mugzy,

Dec 05, 2008

@marcel Right said. I still feel its so weird that I need to use wine with workarounds to get to work iTunes on ubuntu. I think its an irony that apple doesn't have a linux version of iTunes especially since the base of apple is Unix

Dannytatom,

Dec 05, 2008

I've been using Songbird since 0.6 and love it. My only complaint is the amount of memory it uses, though that could just be my laptop's fault.

Jbond,

Dec 05, 2008

Still prefer winamp to anything else I've tried.

Digimist,

Dec 06, 2008

Not tried songbird as yet. Does it fulfill all the same features as iTunes? I listen to podcast whilst driving and download the odd film here and there.

Homosuperior,

Dec 06, 2008

No, like Firefox and Flock and all the other Mozilla software, it's a RAM hog on my Mac and eventually becomes sluggish and need to be quit and restarted. Great ideas, well implemented but iTunes runs all day without causing me problems.