Comments on: Amarok 2 Beta on Mac OS X – Awesomeness Unlimited

By: Apoorv Khatreja

Apoorv Khatreja — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 09:19:06 +0000

I’m used to iTunes now, but sure as hell miss Amarok a lot. Music management in iTunes sucks. You have to introduce a workaround for simple tasks such as syncing music with an external device which is not manufactured by Apple.

By: Calgary Graphic Design

Calgary Graphic Design — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 08:24:53 +0000

Can’t get used to iTunes? What is there to get used to? Import CD, play tunes.

And if it took a laptop to stop you listening to music, then your music listening can’t be that important.

By: jefferai

jefferai — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 22:23:20 +0000

FYI,

There are much newer packages that strip out as much of Qt/KDE as humanly possible to get the size down to about 75MB. Lots of bug fixes too.

Ideally, there will eventually be both a standalone installer, and one that can be used if KDE4 libraries have already been installed (making the Amarok install much, much smaller than 75MB even).

By: Maunykah Arcelin

Maunykah Arcelin — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 16:37:52 +0000

I’m quite estatic that I am able to use Amarok on my aging G4 but I do have a tiny question: is there a way to get the shoutcast streams to actually work? The streams simply refuse to play. I just kind of assumed that amarok would just the codecs that are on my machine already. If anyone can help it would be gratefully appreciated.

By: Amarok! On OS X! - Can you spell cacophony?

Amarok! On OS X! - Can you spell cacophony? — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 04:16:19 +0000

[...] can’t wait to get home to download this. An installable package of Amarok for my mac! Joy of joys! I kept telling myself that when I [...]

By: Uncool Shitty

Uncool Shitty — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 15:31:06 +0000

Well, it’s a matter of choice, isn’t it?

I could have got a 15″ Dell Vostro with 4GB RAM, a 2.4GHZ Core2 Duo and a 250GB hard drive for 50K. Yet I spent 54K on a MacBook. It was a matter of choice.

BTW, to see what AmaroK can do, you have to use it first. It’s got *the* best music library management features I’ve ever seen in a media player. Plus, it has an open API you can use to write scripts in your favorite scripting language. This last feature alone makes it the default choice for techies like me and Apoorv.

iTunes is a nice piece of software. But I just can’t get used to it.

By: Vikas

Vikas — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 06:23:09 +0000

Hi,
Since you have put in so much effort to download and install this huge 300 MB of this crashing, hanging, buggy application for listening music,
Can you precisely specify what you dont like in iTunes ?

By: Uncool Shitty

Uncool Shitty — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 06:12:34 +0000

I don’t mind installing 300MB of libraries if I can get access to all the cool KDE apps. I hate KDE the desktop environment, but on my PC I use AmaroK, KOffice and KTorrent even when I’m using GNOME. Now I can get all these on my Mac, too. Turtle power, indeed.

One thing I don’t get : why did they install Konqueror? I know AmaroK uses it for rendering a lot of HTML, but why use KHTML when we already have WebKit on the Mac? Why install Nepomuk? Dolphin? Kwrite? KWallet?

The tight coupling between KDE apps is an advantage if you’re using KDE, but it can pose a problem when you try to go cross platform. I, for one, would like to see the size of the apps being brought down a bit.

PS: It’s not that iTunes is a small download. The download is 85MB, and takes 150MB on installation.

TURTLE POWER!

By: tbocek

tbocek — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 16:20:19 +0000

I agree, that’s a problem that’s common to KDE on other platforms (happens on Windows too). The problem is that qt4 isn’t just a set of widgets – it’s a whole application framework and includes libraries like Phonon for media playing (which Amarok uses). I’ve dug through the Amarok source and can say for a fact that QT’s signal/slots framework is embedded throughout. So no, it can’t “just” be built using OSX widgets replacing the QT ones.

Hopefully soon they’ll replicate the package manager they have for Windows so that you only have to install the KDE/QT libraries once, then applications like Amarok or Okular or whatever take very little space. 300 MB seems like a lot here, but it’s similar to what happens on Windows with e.g. the .net framework.

By: Apoorv Khatreja

Apoorv Khatreja — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 16:18:22 +0000

The 300 MB package contains a lot more than you think it does. See http://i34.tinypic.com/11ujodi.png

By: Gijs

Gijs — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 12:33:36 +0000

Though it is the best music player around, It doesn’t really justify those 300 Mb of packagespace (not to mention its installed space. Even iTunes comes lighter. I think all kind of KDE4 libraries are included, but couldn’t Amarok be built using Mac OSX widgets?