Since my last post about Mac software, I stumbled upon a couple more software that either may add to the list, or completely change some of the items on that post. Since it’s a poin in the arse to keep on editing that same post, I guess I’ll just post along with the new developments.
One is on BitTorrent applications (on which the previous post was already modified). I’ve managed to find two torrent applications that work similar to ABC Torrent for windows: Azureus and Bits on Wheels. I’m using the latter since Azureus on the PC wasn’t quite a popular choice for those who loathe resource hungry apps. So I’m now replacing Tomato Torrent with Bits on Wheels.
Next would be my new replacement for LimeWire: Poisoned – a multi-network P2P app. I’m kinda big on the whole multi-stuff since developers can’t get their standards/protocols straight (this will never go away) so the next best thing is to have a single app that can communicate with everyone rather than dealing with the extra overhead of launching separate apps to do one of each function.
The Poisoned Project’s “Poisoned” is a beautiful, flexible and powerful file sharing application for Mac OS X. Unlike applications like LimeWire or Kazaa that connect to only one file sharing network, Poisoned can connect to several seamlessly. Unlike Kazaa and several other file sharing applications, Poisoned contains no spyware and no adware. In addition, Poisoned, is free and open-source software.
Last would be a decent non-obtrusive way to control iTunes. which the bulk of this post will be discussing.
The need for a controller?
Of course to each his own, but here’s my scenario. Sometimes I listen to music just for listening/rating/organizing… in that case, it’s totally fine to have iTunes in the foreground. Most of the time however, I just like to skip songs here and there while I’m doing something else with the computer. And given the size of my music library, putting it on shuffle isn’t a good idea as there are a lot of extraneous audio files in my library aside from the music.
X-Tunes
The first application I tried was [X-Tunes], and quite frankly it did pretty well. You would press a hotkey and it would overlay a controller (which you could click) over anything you’re doing. It also supported hotkeys of the controls themselves when X-tunes is active.
This is a good approach since hotkeys in general are something you have to be careful with… especially if you’re a keyboard-navigating person. You never know when a hotkey is conflicting with some other app (or system) hotkey – which isn’t dangerous, but very irritating. How would you like to suddenly know that a keystroke you’re used to doing in Photoshop suddenly doesn’t work – and instead pauses the song.
Anyways, these “extended-hotkeys” only active when X-Tunes is active – and that solves that!
I uninstalled X-Tunes for reasons I can’t remember. But I know it had nothing to do with its performance. Instead of reinstalling it however, I just tried other software and just didn’t feel the urge to return to it.
Synergy
The next software was Synergy, which was better for me, it used the overlay for simply displaying song info. Meaning it totally relies on hotkeys, unless you access the playback controls from the menubar – which I disabled. The overlay was customizable and much better than what X-Tunes had to offer. While X-Tunes was only for playback, Synergy offered playlist selection and some other stuff, which was a big plus.
The hotkeys were of course active the whole time, which was different from X-Tunes, but since you could configure them, I guess it was forgivable (although I’d still prefer the way X-Tunes did it).
You Control: Tunes
Last was You Software’s You Control: Tunes. Very similar to Synergy with one glaring difference: There was not only playlist control, but you had access to your whole library! Song/Artist/Genre/Album listing were all there – which practically meant that you didn’t have to bring iTunes to the foreground anymore… ever! Well probably not forever, but you know what I mean.
Another big plus was that while Synergy had playlist control, the hotkey feature were mostly [still] for playback alone. If you want to access the playlist, you’d have to navigate your mouse to it’s icon in the menubar and do your thing.
You Control: Tunes however, aside from having your basic configurable playback hotkeys, also supported a hotkey to launch the main menu itself (similar to clicking on its icon on the menubar), which shows all those extra goodies I mentioned on a popup menu – but all possible without the use of a mouse pointer. This is already similar to bringing iTunes upfront with the difference that it is all keyboard strokes and nothing to maximize, minimize, or move. By far it’s the most intuitive piece of software for iTunes ever made IMHO.
The only thing lacking [which Synergy had] was the ability to rate your songs… but I can wait for the next version. After all, it’s free!