I wish media player developers would stop trying to imitate iTunes. I hate iTunes. It's confusing (it's caused me to delete my entire music collection on my PC on multiple occasions), it's huge and demanding (of my focus/attention, and also computing resources) where it shouldn't be, and its integration with iTunes store is pointless and annoying to me (I don't shop at iTunes).<p>It's great that seemingly high quality cross-platform tools like this are being developed, though I wonder what this does that Songbird (the last big "iTunes replacement" I can think of) does not?
I know iTunes isn't very popular with HN readers, so I'll balance things out a bit and play devil's advocate for a while: I like iTunes quite a bit. There are certainly some minor gripes and irritations, particularly with the UI, but overall I'm satisfied with the performance of iTunes and wouldn't want to replace it without much careful thought.<p>I'm not a computer power user, more of a 'system dadmin'; we run iTunes in the house on about six (Mac) computers and half a dozen or so devices. iTunes runs happily on all the computers, ranging from an old original iMac from 2001 (which runs Tiger and iTunes 8 and acts as an internet radio and music 'terminal') to an eMac from 2005 running Leopard and iTunes 10) and various Snow Leopard machines and attached drives.<p>The different copies of iTunes copes with various libraries (the biggest one is 110GB) with apparent ease, and keeps track of the settings on various iPods, including a 60GB classic from 2005, two iPhones, three iPod Touches and a couple of Shuffles. It's easy to play music from other machines around the house - click on the computer's name and start listening to its music. It's also nice that when one of my children, say, buys an app for their iPhone on their iTunes Store account it appears automatically on mine too; similarly if I put music on mine it appears in their library, but of course you can be more selective in what you copy from family members' accounts and machines...<p>I love the power of iTunes playlists - those heavy duty database-query-like nested multiple smart playlists - and it's a great way to control what gets put onto your iPod while it charges and you sleep.<p>I also like: the automatic downloading of the latest podcasts and TV episodes; adding PDFs to my library puts them on my iPhone; broadcasting music around the house using iTunes DJ mode and Rogue Amoeba's Airfoil - controlling the music from any room using the Remote iPhone app (and sometimes letting people select music from their iOS devices); browsing the iTunes University and downloading lectures; tracking my App store spending with Wetfish Software's App Store Expense Monitor; writing new visualizers with Quartz Composer (which is cool if weird); ripping CDs with automatic track naming. I could go on.<p>OK, I'll accept that iTunes is a bizarre behemoth of an application, and has certainly outgrown its moniker. But, for day to day use, people like me find it a solid and reliable media and device 'engine' that doesn't require much thought or effort to use effectively.<p>But don't get me started on those stupid scrolling boxes within boxes...<p>Edit: when I started typing this, I was sure the title said 'Miro 4 ... iTunes replacement ...'. When I finished typing, it didn't. (I went off to work between those two times.) So I was thinking about whether Miro could replace more than 10% of iTunes' functionality. This comment seems less relevant now.
Ok, so it's billed (here at least) as the "iTunes Replacement". And it advertises strongly "Converts and syncs to Android" (front and centre on the main page).<p>But I'm really unclear if it'll actually replace iTunes for my iPod Touch. It doesn't say anything about i devices that I can see (except for advertising an iPad app that doesn't seem to be available yet.)<p>So either;
a) it doesn't sync my iOS devices in which case it may be a great media player, but it's not an iTunes replacement or
b) They're hoping I'll take a huge amount for granted.<p>My guess is that the heading in Hacker News is the bit that's completely misleading and I do wish folk wouldn't editorialize the headline.<p>If it _is_ an iTunes replacement then a lot more info is needed - like will it sync my apps? Can I purchase new apps? and so on.
"Replacement" is a bit too tough a word.<p>It doesn't sync with (Apple) mobile devices, the primary reason I stick with iTunes.<p>It also seems more sluggish and bloated than iTunes on my MBP i7 running 10.6.<p>Seems like it was released way too prematurely. They could have spent more time building features & polish and utilized their launch hype much better.<p>Sorting through all the marketing fluff, what are the true advantages of Miro?
Horribly annoying that on their website, when I click play on a video then close the popup, the video keeps playing! I tried to view a few clips and they were all playing in the background. Had to re-open the video again and manually press the pause button to stop them.<p>Otherwise, it looks very similar to DoubleTwist but with the addition of syncing iOS devices. Wish it could drop some of the bloat (for example the torrent client) to make it more compelling. It is very tough though to make things more simplified.<p>I know everyone has their gripes with iTunes, but it is very tough to have an interface that is complex enough to combine local management of music, management of apps, music, and videos on a device, a store and still allow the user the power to make decisions about individual songs, etc.<p>I think Apple should diverge them and have the device syncing component as a separate program entirely, but tightly integrated so it can nab playlists, podcasts, etc. from iTunes.<p>I hear iTunes is horrible on Windows, but on Mac it's not too bad and I can't think of many ways they could really optimize it without stripping features that would piss off a lot of users.
It's not an iTunes replacement at all. I have an iPhone and buy apps through iTunes sometimes. This doesn't have that functionality (nor the syncing with the iPhone).<p>Also, it has a bittorrent client built in... Why?
Looks interesting, however I really dislike iTunes' "everything under then sun" motto. If you are looking for something much more lightweight for playing music, check out mpd <a href="http://mpd.wikia.com/wiki/Music_Player_Daemon_Wiki" rel="nofollow">http://mpd.wikia.com/wiki/Music_Player_Daemon_Wiki</a> . There is a really nice Mac mpd client called Theremin: <a href="http://theremin.sigterm.eu/" rel="nofollow">http://theremin.sigterm.eu/</a>
How does it handle large (+50,000 files) collections?<p>Also: Oh no, it does that homepage spammy feeling option in the installer thing. This instantly makes me not want to donate, tbh, as it just feels scummy.
Miro's a very cool project - the Participatory Culture Foundation does a bang-up job of productizing what they do and making it pretty.<p>For someone who'd want to switch from iTunes for higher performance and simplicity, rather than just going for an equivalent, what would I do?
Oh I just read the heading 'iTunes replacement', installed it and plugged in my iPhone to see how it behaves; and ta-da nothing happens! My mistake that I did not read the features, but whatever, why do we want to call it an iTunes replacement when it can't even sync
I'd have hoped that an 'iTunes replacement' would be one that's somewhat less bloaty. I don't see Miro filling that gap, given it includes such nonsense as a BitTorrent client.
But can it play files over DAAP?
That is the (my) holy grail for Mac music.<p>Songbird sort-of can, in a buggy crashy way.
Nothing else I have tried (Banshee, Amarok, Rhythmbox, firefly player jar) compiles and loads and runs an plays on Mac.
an "open" media player that is trying to eat Apples crumbs and wants independents to join in should have some kind of decentralized market for producers and publishers.
The hackers solution. A media server running mpd or XMMS2, with the proper metadata organizing utility for your medialib. Plus running mplayer and possibly some ffmpeg tweaking for when you're out in the deep end. Plays anything, anywhere, and leaves the rest up to your imagination.<p>I guess Miro is great, but any complete solution will always be inferior to the proper tools for the right jobs.
The first thing that struck me was how visually identical to iTunes it was. Considering how Apple sued Samsung over UI similarity, I wouldn't be surprised if Miro could run into similar problems.