Mike, Your arguments are great -- a few of which I thought of myself. I will have to check into Amrok and Juk... I am not very familiar with the plethora of Linux apps that are out there. As for the the closed-source issue... I am an open source advocate myself (I guess I wouldn't have an N800 if I wasn't!). But, going too far is to say that people like Earthlink (feather.net), Gizmo, and Rhapsody (among others) shouldn't be allowed to create apps for the IT. I'm not saying that Nokia should go the closed-source route (I'd love to see everything remain open)... It's the partnering idea that I'm arguing for (and it sounds like you are too). There are already some amazing applications available. (This case-in-pont was recently made by the porter of Claws-mail.) Why start from scratch each time? Tim --- Weblog ~ http://tim.samoff.com Baby Blog ~ http://kc.samoff.com Photography ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/timsamoff Music ~ http://www.adkoc.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 17:39:56 -0400 From: Mike Lococo Subject: Media Player Syncing (was Re: Adobe Media Player...) To: maemo-users at maemo.org Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed >> ... attempt to make an "iTunes killer" of sorts... It would be so >> nice to have a media app on IT and computer that synced like >> iTunes does. > > When I plug my 770 (or any USB-drive) into my computer with a > recently-downloaded version of Winamp, Winamp asks if I want to > manage media on it. Many apps can be used to sync file trees (that can contain media files). The tricky part is setting up playcount and metadata syncing. What iTunes/iPods do that's cool is: * Keep track of what you listen to and do cool stuff with it. Find your favorite albums, suggest artists that you haven't listened to recently that are similar to what you're listening to now, etc. A lot of listening happens on your mobile device, and these stats get much more interesting if that data is available to the desktop player. * Allow you to fix broken metadata on your portable, and have those changes propagate to your desktop (and to other portables if you have them). Amarok and a number of Linux players do similar coolness with playcounts. I'm not aware of a non-iTunes platform that offers robust syncing with a portable device, though (probably because control over the desktop _and_ mobile software is required to implement). I'd rather see a partnership with the developers of Amarok or Juk than with Adobe. Creating a music player is hard to do well, and takes sustained effort at fixing UI bugs. Adobe is likely to create a closed client that kind of sucks (all music players suck at first) and will be obsolesced when the N900 comes out. The open teams are likely to create a syncing standard that is implementable by other device manufacturers, and an open N-series client that will get better over time (after sucking at first, of course). Thanks, Mike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.maemo.org/pipermail/maemo-users/attachments/20070419/d7b68327/attachment.htm
