Sort of interesting article.
I went looking for an itunes alternative when I decided that I had to re-rip my entire CD collection as lossless. I just wasn't comfortable with ALAC, which left FLAC, which itunes doesn't play. About the same time I realized that I had been hating itunes for literally years. The last decent version was something like 2005 or 2007. One has to wonder what goes on in the heads of the designers of itunes. They keep pulling the rug out from under their users, over and over and over again. First they introduce a feature. Then another. Once you're used to the first one, then they remove that feature. WAY too many facelifts of the interface. It's like an almost brand new program with nearly every version.
When I went on my search for a player, I tried literally everything available for the Mac that was under $75. I didn't try Amarra because it was confusing and the "middle" version was $100.
I even tried the player they list in the Wired article: Swinsian. It's ok. It looks like the older itunes and sorta behaves like it. If it was able to show large album art of the currently playing song, I probably would have given it a longer test drive. As it is, I found it to be way too simple and not pleasing to look at. I guess (even at that point with less than 30 days of use) I was already spoiled by the power of JRiver.
It's weird that the article really isn't any kind of a survey of alternatives. More just a story of "itunes is sucking more and more, but you can sorta switch if you don't have an iphone".
Brian.
