[Rhythmbox-devel] Why I'll Probably Always Use amaroK

[Andrei Thorp <garoth gmail com>]

Hello.

First off, this is not intended to offend any of the great people 
working on Rhythmbox, this is simply why I have always used and will 
probably always use amaroK instead of Rhythmbox.

1) (Most Important) amaroK is a very attractive program. They have good 
digital artists and a photographer working for them, if you check out 
the website, you'll see what I mean. Also, amaroK does cover images from 
amazon.com, and it displays them often, making the program look quite 
nice. Notice also, that it has pleasant and non-offensive pop-ups 
telling you of what song is playing, with cool rounded off edges (which 
I suppose aren't that important, because square edges could be cool 
too). There are many pieces of amaroK which have an artistic touch to 
them, right down to how the side tabs fade in and out when you hover 
over them. Pretty much, there is a lot of nice stuff to look at in 
amaroK, including visualizations that are nice and up front by default. 
Face it, although flashy stuff may not be the most functional, it's 
certainly important to a lot of users (like me), is being more and more 
incorporated into the desktop, and is very important for music players 
(considering the fact that most of the big ones are quite attractive: 
Windows Media Player 10 is a feat of art (although it sucks for 
usability, I think, and I don't like the feel), Apple's iTunes does a 
lot of nice sliding and animation, and is very usable, although not very 
compact, and Amarok has it's own style, as described above a bit. 
Rythmbox, although very usable, isn't nice to look at. You may ask how 
often I see a music player? Well, a lot, actually. I change songs often 
and the pop-ups from amaroK with the album cover make an impression.

2) Although Rythmbox is easy to use and quite complete with features, it 
does something very smart: it doesn't show them all when they won't be 
needed... amaroK does, and that really shows how powerful it is. Maybe a 
fault, maybe a bonus. Example: music devices. On amaroK there is always 
a tab for it, on Rhythmbox, it shows up when needed. The interface is so 
nice and clean that it looks like the program isn't done. I know this is 
finicky, but that's my impression.

Aside from that, Rhythmbox is great. It's faster than anything and it 
works really well. I think that with a bit of flashyness and without the 
14 mile track bar for where in the song you are, it would be absolutely 
great. Good work, I hope that it'll keep it's good stuff while picking 
up the other good stuff of other players.