
Winamp for Mac - drewda
http://www.winamp.com/mac
======
natesm
As far as I can tell, it's mostly just an ugly version of iTunes.

* Visuals aside, the UI is basically iTunes. It has the exact same elements in the exact same places, except Winamp looks like a tacky GTK+ theme.

* I couldn't figure out how to hide "Genre", which I strongly dislike, and "Year", which I don't care about.

* No fullscreen on Lion - this takes, literally, 5 minutes to add. I guess they would have to spend some time drawing a completely custom button.

* The largest UI element is the number of seconds that have elapsed in the current song. Is this really something that people care about?

* Sorting by artist seems to be broken - if I sort by artist, it should logically order each artist's albums alphabetically as well. I'm not sure what secondary ordering its actually using - it's not alphabetical by track or ordered by track number (all 1, all 2, ...). iTunes calls the manner of sorting that I suggest "album by artist".

* Scrolling is broken (not smooth). This is also an issue in Spotify.

* For some reason there is a prominent button to show the "About" dialog.

Good things:

* When the track changes, this list doesn't snap back to the new song. This is one of the most annoying features in iTunes.

* When the track changes, if you have searched for something, it doesn't just _stop_ like iTunes. In iTunes, if you start playing a Beatles song, then search for "The Clash", if that Beatles song ends, it will not go to the next Beatles song, because the original song is no longer visible.

* Watch folders, which, if it wasn't ugly, would be reason enough to use it.

~~~
duskwuff
Also:

\- The options for playlist viewing/filtering are limited. There's no
equivalent to iTunes' "column browser", so the only way to (for instance) play
a single album is to search for its name!

\- There is no tag editor at all. What.

\- While you _can_ create playlists, I can't find any way to add tracks to
them or reorder them, making them pretty much useless.

\- The (light-gray-background) scrollbars look completely out of place on the
black background. (This kind of falls under your point of "ugly", but it's
sufficiently broken that it's worth calling out.)

~~~
natesm
I actually don't think the tag editor is a big deal. The only "tag editing"
program I use is Picard, and it's just once for each file, which gets it
perfectly tagged, renamed, and placed in the proper directory.

Oh, here is another one that I didn't notice at first. Bottom right corner
resizing on Lion. Wrong.

------
zephjc
It's finally come full circle I guess:

WinAmp's UI(1) was copied by SoundJam MP for the Mac(2) circa 1999. Apple
bought SoundJam and turned it into iTunes after overhauling the UI(3) leading
to what we have today(4), only to be copied by WinAmp as we see in the OP.

1)
[http://images.scripting.com/archiveScriptingCom/2005/04/16/w...](http://images.scripting.com/archiveScriptingCom/2005/04/16/winamp.gif)

2) <http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e4/Soundjammp.jpg>

3)
[http://www.blogcdn.com/www.tuaw.com/media/2006/09/itunes1.jp...](http://www.blogcdn.com/www.tuaw.com/media/2006/09/itunes1.jpg)

4) <http://cdn.macrumors.com/article-new/2011/06/itunes_10_5.jpg>

------
blackguardx
OS X has been a ghetto for music players for some time. If you dont't like
iTunes, you don't really have many good options. Hopefully this will ignite
some more competition in that space.

~~~
simonbrown
VLC has a Mac version. I don't know how good it is, though.

~~~
scottschulthess
VLC is great for watching video. It'll play anything. It's either that or
quicktime+perian.

~~~
Hemospectrum
MPlayerX has fewer weird bugs and a nicer interface than VLC, and is free of
the lag issues that Perian displays with certain formats.

------
rednaught
Is there an equivalent of foobar2000 for Mac?

The only player I've used on a regular basis on Mac is Vox (
<http://www.voxapp.didgeroo.com/> ).

------
ImprovedSilence
Right now this seems to be depressingly sparse, for any music player. If this
could get some of the old 2.x basic winamp functionality (shuffle/repeat,
support OLD SCHOOL SKINS, and, most importantly, be able to queue up files(my
biggest biggest biggest pet peeve against iTunes)) I would ecstatic. I'm gonna
be honest, ever since leaving windows, I was able to say, half joking, but
being completely serious, that the biggest thing I missed about windows was
winamp (yeah, I"m an old school hold out, but it worked soooo good, and my
skin looked sooooo good, and it didnt take up too much space). This player
doesn't do it for me, but it shows there is potential. I hope.

------
egypturnash
Three-second review: Wow, this would be really great if I was still a twelve-
year-old boy who thinks that white text on a black background is the bee's
knees.

Also that twelve-year-old boy would probably have to not be used to playing
all of his music out of a few Smart Playlists. Not that I've downloaded and
tried Winamp but I am guessing it doesn't do those because no "iTunes
alternative" has ever had that.

But I guess the people who actually spend a lot of time looking at their music
player will like this because it can import the awesome skin with a hot anime
babe on it that they had to abandon when they switched to a Mac? I guess. I
dunno, iTunes spends 99% of its time on my machine hidden, being controlled by
Quicksilver hotkeys, and telling me what's playing via Growl alerts.

~~~
CJefferson
Just wanted to say, your comment is not very useful.

You admit that you haven't downloaded it, yet write a lengthy "review". If you
had downloaded it, you would know it has no skin support.

~~~
egypturnash
You must live deep in the land of tl;dr if five sentences is "lengthy".

But thanks for correcting my speculation. Wow. No skin support? That seemed to
be one of the killer features of Winamp judging from all the screenshots I
used to see. I guess the "killer" feature is "moves music between iTunes and
your Android phone", which I've been happily using Salling Media Sync for ever
since I got a N1.

------
ZipCordManiac
This runs great. Unlike iTunes it doesn't check my entire damn music library
on the NAS every single time or have tons of bloatware like Ping, iTunes
Store, etc. iTunes took on average 3-5 minutes just to start. This starts
quickly and immediately loads my music. If it gets updated with some decent
features I'd use it exclusively. Another solution people might be interested
in is Clementine.

<http://code.google.com/p/clementine-player/>

~~~
mortenjorck
Something has to be timing out with your network share. I have a library tens
of gigabytes in size and a three-year-old MacBook Pro, and it the app starts
in about five seconds.

iTunes is bloated; I won't argue with that—but it's definitely not slow.

------
zyang
Shouldn't it be called Macamp?

~~~
uptown
Don't mess with an established brand. This lesson brought to you by Qwikster.

~~~
mirkules
There used to be a version called MacAmp, back around the 2000s. Back then, it
resembled the current windows version 2.7-something.

I haven't tried installing it, but here's the link for MacAmp.
<http://www.macamplite.com/>

------
vito
Looks promising, but very basic so far. No shuffle/repeat, enqueueing, or
really anything beyond play, pause, previous, and next. It did import my
iTunes library in <2 seconds though, which seems impressive compared to
iTunes', what, 15 minutes?

Excited to see a hopefully serious competitor to iTunes, it's actually great
to see them starting simple. What's there works well.

~~~
natesm
Keep in mind that iTunes had already done the hard work for Winamp. iTunes has
to walk your directory structure, open each file, and read the ID3 tags. That
takes real, actual time, especially on a spinning disk. iTunes is probably
slower than it has to be, but there is a limit on how fast that sort of thing
can be. Parsing a single XML file takes a lot less time.

It took a lot longer than 2 seconds for me as well - about 16k songs.

------
senthilnayagam
I welcome Winamp on OSX , I first used Winamp in 1997-98 and it was liberating
in many senses, mp3 could be ripped or downloaded and can build playlists, and
later they brought plugins for visualization and DSP.

I am not a iTunes fan, it is more of a necessary evil, as I have many Mac and
iOS devices.

------
nodesocket
Ahhh Winamp... Brings back to the days of Napster. I like to call them, the
glory days of music.

~~~
j79
I remember using Winamp even before Napster! 1997, I think? The first version
with the basic look. I remember my machine was so old that the mp3 I
downloaded wouldn't play at the full bitrate. Instead, it played at 64kbps. I
remembered thinking how "crappy" mp3s sounded and was lost why everyone
thought they were so great. When I finally upgraded (shortly after), my music
world completely changed. Ended up buying a Rio PMP300. Amazing how far we've
come.

~~~
ajarmoniuk
Rio was tad expensive... but it was _so_ light compared to a discman...

------
ericdykstra
Awesome; will download as soon as last.fm supports it. In my (albeit limited)
search for a music player on OS X, iTunes is the best last.fm supported music
player available, which is unfortunate because iTunes blows.

~~~
wazoox
SongBird supports LastFM perfectly, doesn't take 15 minutes to boot, and
doesn't come with annoying storefront, ping and other stuff I don't want to
see. You should give it a try.

------
jazz
"Why Winamp for Mac Is the Media Media Player for Android" Did I miss
something?

------
sabret00the
I wish they'd sort out the Windows version before they moved on to sorting out
other platforms, but I can understand why.

I wrote about my gripes with Winamp a couple of times:
[http://s00techified.wordpress.com/2011/07/05/soo-what-
happen...](http://s00techified.wordpress.com/2011/07/05/soo-what-happened-to-
winamp/) [http://s00techified.wordpress.com/2011/07/11/soo-
alternative...](http://s00techified.wordpress.com/2011/07/11/soo-alternatives-
to-winamp-someone-mentioned-songbird/)

------
jamesrcole
Winamp with the Bento skin, and the 'Local media -> audio' pane open is far
better than any player I've come across on the Mac.. I'm really hoping the Mac
version gets as good as the Windows version.

The 'Local media -> audio' pane makes it really quick and easy to browse music
by genre or artist, and if you rate your songs, your top songs, or top songs
by genre or artist.

And the window-shade mode is nice for letting you see what's playing and
controlling with minimal distraction and taking up minimal space.

I've really missed it since switching to a Mac.

------
xenophanes
What is wrong with the piece of crap! I used to use winamp a long time ago.
Now it just doesn't work.

I tried to play an avi. No. They're all greyed out.

I tried dragging an mp3 into it. No.

Tried dragging mp3 onto the dock icon. Looks like it's working but then
nothing happens.

Tried Open File with the mp3 (cmd-L for some reason...) and it lets me pick
the mp3 then nothing happens, it doesn't play it or show up on the playlist.

I give up.

On a related note, I saw some screenshots and the windows version now has a
bloated, horrible UI, not at all how I remember it.

~~~
listic
Here's how it looks for me on Windows XP. It's the classic Winamp skin, the
one that has been there for ages.

<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/311095/Screenshots/winamp_1.png> Full version, when I
turn on the playlist and equalizer. I turn equalizer on just for symmetry; I
never actually use it because I'm sorta audiophile and Equalizer Never Helps.

<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/311095/Screenshots/winamp_2.png> This I see more
often; just the main window without additional windows.

<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/311095/Screenshots/winamp_3.png> Often I minimize it
to a slim bar like this.

<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/311095/Screenshots/winamp_3b.png> Or like this, if
you turned on the playlist.

<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/311095/Screenshots/winamp_4.png> This I see even
more; Winamp is minimized to a tray icon (the grey "play" icon)

------
rprime
I like you they underlined the Android part, why take on iPhone, that's
dominated by iTunes when there's such a great market for Android.

------
glhaynes
I'm gonna skin it to look like iTunes for Windows.

~~~
TobbenTM
Is there a major difference between iTunes for Windows and iTunes for Mac?
(Don't use Mac OS X, sorry)

~~~
shinratdr
iTunes for Mac is a great music player/jukebox. The Windows version is slower,
buggier and less responsive. As a result, it's a pretty bad library based
music player in Windows (although nowhere close to as bad as people make it
out to be).

iOS device management is as flaky on Windows as it is on Mac OS X, which is
what they have in common and one of the most frequent complaints. But to be
fair, nothing besides iTunes even tries to do device management as
comprehensively, so there is little to compare it to. Still, it can be buggy
and slow and that is easy to judge even with nothing to directly compare it
to.

IMO iTunes gets an excessive amount of over the top flak from techie types. As
someone who has used it since version one in Mac OS 9, it's really not that
bad. I'm quite picky about my applications and I've been using it every day
for around 10 years now. I always check out alternatives when they come up for
OS X and they are always much worse in very simple areas, like scrolling. Go
ahead, grab almost any alternative music player for OS X and throw in a 20k
song library. If it scrolls as smoothly as iTunes, I'll be amazed.

~~~
TobbenTM
Good to know, but I was thinking more in the way of UI, as he said he wanted
to skin it like the Windows version.

~~~
glhaynes
Sorry to have mislead - I was just making a dumb joke (against my better
judgment) on the name... Winamp (which was famously skinnable and has
"Win[dows]" right in the name) for Mac.

------
psychic_gibbon
Looks good. But all I want is a file system browser. Which I don't see? I'm
using Clementine at the moment which has one.

------
netnichols
Back when I was on Windows I believe my progression was:

Real Jukebox > MusicMatch Jukebox > Winamp > Foobar2000

Remember the nosedive Winamp took after AOL bought them? But man, I loved how
you could double click the Winamp title bar and it would collapse to this tiny
little bar that you could snap to your taskbar.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
MusicMatch had the best autotagger I've ever used. It's too bad Yahoo ruined a
great player.

------
CJefferson
The major benefit of this for me is the syncing with winamp for Android, which
I find a very good player.

------
richtaur
I love me some Winamp. Since switching to a Mac, it's one of only a few apps
that I miss terribly.

But if it doesn't support the media controls on a Mac keyboard, it just cannot
compete with iTunes. Period.

------
Mithrandir
I remember Winamp; haven't used it in probably 7-8 years. I gave it up for
RealPlayer (which I couldn't stand) and eventually VLC.

Anyone here know the main advantages/disadvantages between Winamp and VLC?

~~~
doron
VLC is great if you want to keep it lean, Winamp will give you better library
management, upnp device support, Android support (wireless as well) and easier
discovery.

~~~
StavrosK
If you want to keep it lean, remove the plugins you don't use from WinAmp, and
use the classic skin. It basically becomes version 2.x, which is a fantastic
player.

~~~
zacharycohn
I still use Winamp 2.89. IMO, the greatest media player of all time.

------
gahhhh
Why do all these people talk about Winamp like if it was the best player for
windows? Sonique was WAY better, back in the day. Winamp was for the kids who
didn't know any better.

------
mvkel
The only reason I'd want Winamp on my Mac is for its ridiculously low resource
usage. If they're going to make it look, act, and EAT like iTunes, why switch?

------
tomc1985
Why couldn't they have just ported the Winamp core and its playback plugins
over to Mac? What the hell is this crap?

------
wazoox
i'm using SongBird, and it's quite nice. It reads most formats, sorts songs
correctly, sync (though not wirelessly) to about anything. It's more feature
complete than this (shuffle, repeat, playlists, lastFM connection, video, etc)
and it's open source (yes, that's quite important a feature to me).

------
jmillage
I'll be honest. I just downloaded it so I could hear that classic app intro -
"it really whips the llama's ass"

------
scottmcleod
Win..Maybe the Windows version can improve and I can finally sync my music.

------
ImprovedSilence
OMG DREAMS DO COME TRUE!

------
meemo
They got the basics right. It's a great start.

------
jgh
Too bad they didn't port WinAmp 2.x to Mac :(

~~~
listic
Are there any ways in which 5.x can't be just like 2.x ?

------
rickdale
Winamp, it really whips the llama's ass

------
parbo
All of these features are also available in Spotify. Oh, and streaming too!

------
hm2k
Why?

------
billpatrianakos
Too little too late. I wish they had this when I got my first Mac. Winamp was
the shit when I was a kid and I have a fondness for it out of nostalgia but I
don't see anything special here unfortunately.

------
bitwize
wait what

I don't even

If you already have a Mac, why would you want to use ANYTHING besides iTunes?

Also, sync with Android? You've already got a Mac and an Android, you can't
buy a bloody iPod?

~~~
anonymoushn
iTunes is... amazingly bad. I was using foobar2000 in wine for a while, but
the terrible interaction between X11 apps and spaces got me to switch back to
iTunes. I'll probably opt for a CLI solution in the near future.

~~~
chrishenn
MPD with ncmpcpp is nice and straight to the point. MPD is available through
homebrew.

