Comments on: amaroK, complex?

By: Shawn

Tue, 04 Sep 2007 06:13:55 +0000

I can honestly say, using amaroK has been nothing but a pleasure.

I installed it while I still used GNOME as my (default) desktop, and found it quite nice: Incredibly feature rich, and better than the alternatives. Just incredibly well designed and, well, complete. Hell, it even worked with my 1st gen iPod shuffle with no fiddling - I plugged it in, and everything just worked.

UNIX desktops and applications never, ever, ever work this easily.

Long story short, I got tired of the rest of my desktop being worthless, and went back 100% to KDE. I can’t live without KDE or my beloved amaroK!

By: TiCL

Sun, 18 Feb 2007 15:04:13 +0000

It seems that the Gnome people have invaded this blog to destroy the killer app of KDE (I know amarok run w/o KDE ). PLEASE, do not remove features for the sake of so called simplicity. That Gnome philosophy is for lazy programmers and it is taking them nowhere. It is a pity that successful projects like Gaim are infested with these people (who actually do very very little programming let alone contribute). PLEASE DO NOT LISTEN TO THESE PEOPLE.

By: shs

Mon, 24 Apr 2006 08:03:39 +0000

Amorok offers some new concepts of usability and data management, which at first sight, seem to be complex. But after using it for a while, I say it’s worth to learn these new concepts and enjoy a form of music management that just did’nt exist so far. Great work!

By: enigma

Sat, 15 Apr 2006 13:02:19 +0000

Amarok is a very nice program, and I don’t think it is too complex. I really love the features, such as being able to display artist information and the song lyrics.

I do wish there was a XP version, because sometimes I need to run XP in order to use programs that don’t have a Linux equavalent.

Keep up the good work!

By: Dustin

Sat, 08 Apr 2006 05:28:08 +0000

Ah, I think I’ll throw my chip in too. I personally think amaroK is quite fine as is. Maybe the sane defaults idea is a good idea, I don’t know, whatever. The important thing is that the player seems quite successful as is because it appeals to a variety of people. It seems to have the features that people want and need, who could ask for more than that? The GUI is there, and it works. It’s perfectly usable from its typical perspective, as far as I have seen. The other day I showed a friend Linux, and his comments afterwords “the music player was cool.” I found that fascinating, that that was the thing remembered most. I think the GUI is mature, not complex, and keep in mind that it is usually only the people who are displeased for some reason or another that will actually say something to try to change it. If the GUI works and people are happy, then why not go on a bug hunt or work on some killer feature rather than worry about a GUI that doesn’t have anything wrong with it?

By: Ben

Thu, 06 Apr 2006 15:45:56 +0000

I too think that amarok is better then juk or other music players.
However, I was confused by the lack of a context menu to add music to a playlist. I don’t know why but it feels more intutive for a context menu to allow music to be added to the current playlist/default list.

That being said, great job on a great app!
Ben

By: Anshul

Thu, 06 Apr 2006 11:17:31 +0000

I guess I’m a year late but here’s my view of why the current GUI of amaroK needs to be improved.

http://yavin4.anshul.info/2006/04/06/amarok-gripes/

By: Joergen Ramskov

Thu, 06 Apr 2006 10:27:57 +0000

I don’t find AmaroK scary or too complex. It was a but confusing at first and it took me a little while to get used to the way it works, but that was most likely because I hadn’t used any similar applications before. I’d only used simple players like winamp and foobar (windows apps) and xmms.

The only real problem I have had is stability, but I think that is related to sound system (gstreamer and so forth), however that is not really obvious to me as a user and the result is the same

By: Renato

Thu, 06 Apr 2006 08:20:09 +0000

I for one find Amarok fairly confusing and complex because I simply don’t understand the “intended use”. Bear in mind that I have never ever used (or seen running) iTunes, or other “music organizers”, or an iPod for that matter.

Amarok (and other players/organizers, like banshee and rhythmbox) seem to imply a “way” of interacting that is obvious (to you), but obscure to anyone that does not already know it.

From time to time I try to use Amarok, banshee, rhythmbox, and others… and always revert to bmp (which is the same to say xmms).

Could you describe the “standard workflow” of an AmaroK user? Sounds like obvious, but it is not.

As a side note, the interface of AmaroK is pretty crowded on a 1024×768 screen, but this is also a matter of taste (I find the vertical tabs of kde apps ugly and confusing, for example)… but I’m a gnome user, don’t mind me

Renato

By: mark

Thu, 06 Apr 2006 08:15:57 +0000

Sometimes, when you overengineer things, they become unintuivtive.

I must be a robot because I think in files and directories. When using “smart” music players like amarok, I often have to give up finding the music I want to hear because I’m flooded with suggestions on what to hear.

I do really enjoy amarok at parties, though, when you don’t feel like thinking about what music is playing. And it’s probably also true that “normal people” don’t think in files, so perhaps it’s more intuitive for them. In any case, keep up the good work