how I ditched iTunes and started living with Foobar 2000
[Obligatory hat tip to 'How to stop defragmenting and start living'. As an aside, if you're an Oracle DBA and haven't read this whitepaper, please do so. Now.]
I have used various devices and software over my 76 years on this planet to listen to music:
- Record player
- Cassette player
- Transistor radio
- Ears
- WinAmp
- SonicStage
- Windows Media Player
18 months ago, I finally caved in and bought an iTouch which I use a lot; mainly for listening to music and podcasts at airports.
I duly downloaded iTunes in order to get my music library onto the iTouch. I seem to remember that iTunes couldn't play Windows Media Player files which was slightly irritating. In any case, with a sense of a new beginning and a fresh, clean start, I re-ripped all my music CD's into Apple's AAC format, added the missing album artwork and synchronised my music, photos and applications to the iTouch.
Over the last 18 months, Apple proceeded to add more and more 'features' to iTunes which I don't want or need:
- Tighter integration with the iTunes store
- Genius - some sort of recommendation engine closely linked to the above
- Jukebox
- A default assumption that I also wanted to install additional software packages: QuickTime, Safari and Mobile Me.
When Apple recently released iTunes 9, I suddenly realised I was downloading 98.4MB - just to play music.
It slowly dawned on me that, whenever I started iTunes, my (admittedly aging PC) was unusable for 40 seconds while iTunes initialised and CPU usage hit the roof.
I also realised that iTunes consumed a staggering 82MB of physical memory while playing a tune and this excessive memory consumption could increase to 134MB after connecting to the iTunes store.
I realised this was madness. Complete madness. Finally, I came to my senses and sought out alternative programs to replace the oversized, obese, bloated, multi-function and very slow iTunes.
I soon discovered Foobar 2000 which is a small, compact, lighweight audio player for Windows. I downloaded the program and was immediately struck by the size of the Foobar2000 distribution - 2,985KB, 2.81MB or 3,056,036 bytes to be precise.
This was already promising so I installed the program. I was pleasantly surprised that Foobar quickly imported my existing iTunes music library in its entirety and I was immediately able to play AAC encoded music. No need for additional plugins or codecs.
I was also pleasantly surprised to see Foobar 2000 start up instantaneously (no delay or hourglass here) and consume a slightly more reeasonable 25,888KB of memory.
However, all of this was redundant unless I could actually synchronise music to the iTouch as using two completely separate programs to mange my music was self-defeating. So I downloaded a Foobar extension promisingly named 'Ipod Manager' and configured it.
For a complete fresh start, I took the rather brave (or stupid) move of completely resetting the iTouch to the factory settings which deleted all data and promptly hit 'Sync' in Foobar.
Although it took a while, synchronisation was 100% successful and I even got a 'Preview' of what songs were going to added/removed from the iTouch. This feature was incredibly useful as it gives you a chance to abort if your entire music library is going to be (unexpectedly) deleted.
There were some minor issues - not all album covers were displayed on the iTouch. I discovered that iTunes embeds album artwork in the AAC file. I preferred Foobar's method of adding the album art to the folder as 'Cover.jpg' so you have complete control over the images used. Later on, I actually removed the embedded artwork completely.
What else was missing ? I previously used iTunes to manage podcasts although this was never really satisfactory as iTunes had a weird concept of when the status of a podcast should be modified to 'Listened'. I rather thought listening from start to finish would qualify but Apple obviously disagreed and repeatedly kept sync'ing old content onto the iTouch.
Foobar had another useful extension called 'PodCatcher' which worked brilliantly. It would automatically download new podcasts (in the background) and I was able to easily sync to the iTouch simply by including the new 'Podcasts' category to the synchronisation list.
I wasn't completely happy with the default UI of Foobar so I used the Columns UI extension to make it look slightly more usable with the album artwork displayed.
Foobar 2000 really is the complete music player - once you add the appropriate encoders, it can play virtually music in any format (FLAC, WMA, AAC, WavPack, Ogg Vorbis et al).
One great feature is that Foobar can perform conversion between the various formats. If I can summon up the energy to re-rip all my CD's yet again, I plan to rip all my music to a lossless format (FLAC) and Foobar would dynamically convert to the required lossy, compressed format during the sync to the iTouch.
Another couple of useful extensions for Foobar:
- Audioscrobbler - to upload my played songs (including those on iTouch) to last.fm
- Playback statistics - generates 'Recently Played' playlist.
Although I am now blissfully almost iTunes free, I still need to use iTunes to update the software on the iTouch but I am delighted to say that is the sole extent of my iTunes usage. If I need to install any applications on the iTouch, I can do that directly from the iTouch.
It was particularly satisfying to copy my Foobar configuration and music library to my work laptop and completely remove iTunes from that computer.
product minimalism
Garry Tan, a developer for Posterous (a simple but powerful blog platform), wrote a brilliant post about product design.
Are there any questions? I said yes -- one last one: "When do we decide to remove features?"
In a similar vein, Amit Agarwal asks 'What’s Common Between an iPod and Google ?' Answer: Simplicity.
If I had a cube, I would print both articles out and pin them up.
has your company got a Community Manager ?
My support for the Disqus commenting system used on this blog is well documented. I have also had great support whenever I have had minor issues with a service I paid precisely nothing for.
Disqus are a small company with less than 10 employees. However, Disqus are not a cottage industry operating out of Daniel Ha's garage. Disqus are funded by venture capital (Union Square and angel investors) and raised $500,000 in the last round of funding (March 2008).
So it's not surprising that Disqus are growing and hiring people. However, what fascinates me is that in addition to hiring talented developers to develop, improve, enhance and fix the product, Disqus have recently appointed Giannii as a 'Community Manager'.
Ignoring the lack of a surname and some of the Web 2.0 terms sprinkled in this introductory post; for example, 'Chief Happiness Engineer' is frankly cringe worthy, it is worth noting that Disqus have many channels available for people to contact them:
- Disqus forums
- GetSatisfaction
More importantly, Disqus don't just sit by the computer waiting for people to call in - they proactively monitor all these channels and participate. Moan about a Disqus problem on Twitter and count the seconds until you get a response.
What is interesting about Disqus hiring a 'Community Manager' is not necessarily that a small startup can afford one but Disqus (and presumably the people controlling the purse strings) actually view this role as one of the first ten, and most important, positions to be filled in the company.
So what ? Every company has a 'Community Manager' - they are just called different things 'Sales', 'Marketing', 'Partners', 'Customer Care', 'Public Relations' - every company does this stuff but they don't a) shout about it and b) dress it up in Web 2.0 tinsel.
To pick just one example, Apple are a big, successful company who make clever videos and sell expensive, stylish computers, iPods and iPhones to this type of demographic so surely they must have a 'Community Manager' ?
Surprisingly, they don't. In September, Apple released the 2.1 firmware for the iTouch and this update broke WPA2 wireless connectivity. Having recently acquired an iTouch and been hugely impressed with the device, I was surprised Apple could have introduced such a fundamental bug but I ignored it and waited patiently for a patch.
Unsurprisingly, lots of Apple customers experienced the same issue and multiple threads arose to discuss the issue on Apple's official support forums. The most popular thread now has 36,208 views and 436 replies.
- How many of the 436 replies came from Apple ? None.
- Did Apple respond to any of these threads ? No.
- Did Apple even acknowledge the problem ? No.
- Do Apple care about their customers ? Not sure.
- Am I encouraged to give more money to Apple by spending in the iTunes Store ? No.
- What impression does this give to a recent Apple convert ? Arrogant.
- When is 2.2 scheduled for release ? Not known.
- Will 2.2 include a fix for this issue ? Not known.
- Is a fix even on the horizon ? Originally, I would have bet money on it but, given Apple's lack of response to date, I am now starting to have doubts.
It's obvious that Apple don't have a 'Community Manager'. Does your company ?