CAT | Technicity
Remember when I wrote about Winamp 5.5 and how it was awesome? No? REALLY? Don’t worry. I forgive you. Anyways, I change my mind a lot. Remember that post where I said I was sick of Vista and switched back to XP? Well… I’m back on Vista. But all of this, it isn’t why I’m posting!
Winamp 5.5, it’s still great. But, do you know what’s even greater? The new Zune software! Now, feature-wise Winamp destroys it. But, it is by far the best looking Windows application I have ever used. Designed by the same guys at Microsoft who worked on the Media Center interface in Vista (also great) the new Zune software is beautiful. It’s clean, it’s simple and it does what I need it to do (minus syncing with my iPod… sigh). I’m going to post some screenshots, which while nice looking don’t convey the richness of this interface.
Here’s the main screen. You can see Artists, Albums and Songs. Simple! You can also choose a List view to go back to the way iTunes organizes music, but then I would have to punch you because you make me angry.
Another simple change that I love: song ratings. Seems like everyone is all about the 5-star rating system. Zune, like ClickScore, eschews that scene for the simpler Like It / Don’t Like It system. I like that. I can go through an album, choose the songs I love, choose the songs I hate and not rate the songs that don’t strike me either way.
Back when I posted about Winamp, there was a comment from Dave:
"I want to do the “room of album covers” view – where is that? huh? where?"
Winamp liked the album covers, but Zune, my friends… Zune LOVES Album Art, which makes me, in return, love Zune. Start playing a song, click on the Now Playing icon, and…
Boom! Wall of Album Art! Best thing is, the Zune software doesn’t use standard windows title bars and borders, so you can full-screen that fellow and it fills your entire monitor. I have it running on my 2nd monitor here at work. Looks FANTASTIC. If your mouse leaves the window, all of the extra stuff fades away and you’re left with this:
Gold! Now, Zune hasn’t been released in Canada yet, so a) you can’t sign in with your Canadian Passport account and b) you can’t even buy a damned Zune to sync with this. This software, it has made me want a Zune. I’d sell my 30GB iPod to buy the 8GB Zune. But I can’t. The situation is pretty ridiculous. Mr. Microsoft & Co: how about you let me buy a damned Zune. Also, the feature set of the Zune software is pretty limited, so if you’re an iTunes or a Winamp ‘poweruser’ you’ll probably cry with how little you can do when it comes to managing your library. Me, I’m a simple man and can tolerate the lack of features.
In the end, this software makes me want a Zune and if that was Microsoft’s intention, job well done, sirs and missesssess.
UPDATE: Yeah, forgot to link to the software:
http://www.zune.net/en-us/products/zunesoftware/download.htm
The final version of Winamp 5.5 is out today! I’ve been using the beta for the past couple of weeks, and I do say that it is fantastic. How fantastic? Good question!
Previously, I was an iTunes man. Synced great with the iPod, had a nice looking layout. But dog slow! DOG SLOW! Why does it have to be so slow? Scrolling through my music library ran at a good 1 or 2 FPS. BLEH. I liked the smart playlists, though.
Anyways, Winamp 5.5. FAST. New version has a unified interface, similar to iTunes. iPod syncing works great, probably better then iTunes. I can plug my iPod into my computer at home, sync a bunch of music to it, then take my iPod to work, plug it in, and right-click the albums I want to copy to my local computer and have them copied over. Or just play them straight off of my iPod. No more 1 ipod to 1 itunes library craziness. 
I’ve actually uninstalled iTunes. It’s like a breath of fresh air. Fresh cold mountain air.
www.winamp.com for the goods.
So, Radiohead’s new album In Rainbows is coming out soon, and the band is offering the digital download from their website for as much as you want to pay to download it. I’m loving this idea. I download a lot of my music off of Oink, and there have been many times where I’ve said to myself ‘I wish I could send this artist $5′ because I enjoy the album, but I don’t want to pay for the CD because in the end, the artist would only be seeing a fraction of the money. Yes, I know, it’s bad. But with a CD costing upwards of $10-15, having 90+% of the money go to the record companies, entities which I am certainly no fan of, makes it tough to do. So, I want to reward artists for their fantastic work, but paying $15 for something I already have in my posession (their music) with a fraction of the money going to them just doesn’t seem like the best way to do it.
There was a time when I wanted to set up a website that would be sort of a middleman between music fans and artists. You say how much money you want to send to a band, we’d make sure it got to them. That way, if you downloaded an album or copied a CD from a friend, you could show your appreciation directly. Alas, the logistics of such an operation proved to be a barrier and I imagine I would probably get beat up by Record Industry thugs.
So, new Radiohead album. I’m going to buy it for 5 pounds. If you’re going to download it, how much will you be paying?
I tried hitting iStockPhoto this morning for some quality cheap stock photos, sadly it was down. The sadness was short-lived, however, since their 503 Error page is by far my new favourite error page on the internet.
I’ve been running Vista on my home PC basically since it went gold back in November of last year. We’ve had our ups and downs, but things have been okay. My biggest complaint about Vista is that it just feels really slow. If Vista is your only operating system, I imagine you’d get used to it and not really notice.
On my home PC, I have an XP partition and a Vista partition. Today I had to boot in XP to try out some video transcoding software, and I was again reminded how quickly everything works in XP. I asked myself ‘Christopher, being the sexy, sexy man you are, why do you put up with Vista’s tardiness?’ And I tried to think of a good reason why. And I couldn’t.
So now I’m back in XP, updating all the software I use, and things are looking up. Once my video card comes back from RMA land, it’ll be like a whole new computer. 
Jon just released a new app for those folks using multiple monitors, or maybe a single widescreen monitor. It is called DisplayFusion, which according to Jon was named because his app ‘is a fusion of two things: software and my love of fine art.’
It lets you easily switch windows between monitors using hot keys, and does some funky-ass shit with desktop wallpaper, as well. I have it running here, and I believe my life has become better because of it.
You can download it here.
I’ve been looking for a TV, and on Tuesday (blues day better wear your shoes day) Mandie and I headed into Best Buy to pick one up. I had initially been wanting a 46″+ 1080P LCD/Plasma, and I was eying this Westinghouse 47″ set for $1999. I ended up seeing that the 42″ version of said set was on sale for $1399. Since I had to sign up for a new Best Buy card, they took 10% off of the purchase price (up to $100). So, it ended up costing a cool $1299. No qualms here.
I’ve got it all set up @ home now, with my 360, satellite and Media Center all hooked up. I’ve got Wii component cables and a couple of toslink cables on order from monoprice.com. I love me some cheap cables.
XBox 360 in HD looks faaaaantastic. The HD channels on StarChoice also look great. I guess this is an issue with most LCD panels, but when a scene is really dark, you kind of lose detail in the shadows. I’m going to tweak the video settings when I have some extra time to try and minimize the black crush, but I guess it’s something I’ll have to get used to. It’s not an issue for most of the stuff we’ve been watching, so I can deal.
Come over sometime. We will watch Paul Rudd movies and play video games. Good times will be had.
This digg story I posted for Jon’s iTunes Sync app hit the frontpage this afternoon, and just recently hit 1000 diggs! It was an exciting day in the IT Department, let me tell you. Pizza, ice cream, no-work… good stuff.
Keep an eye on this one, it’s got legs.
Back before my days of iPod ownership, this application would’ve been a Godsend. It allows you to manage your music in iTunes but sync with a non-Apple MP3 player. If that is your thing. And for some of you, it just might be. It was written by Jon W. Snackabury, a co-worker of mine.
So, Apple released a beta of their web browser, Safari, for Windows today. Because we needed another browser. …
I was willing to give it a shot. I use iTunes on a daily basis, and while the performance isn’t the best, it’s great at managing my music collection. I’ve always kind of hated the way it looks, though, especially in Vista. It sticks out like a sore thumb amongst all of my native Windows apps. Why Apple doesn’t just stick to some standard Windows interface guideline is beyond me, but I didn’t realize it was just the tip of the iceberg.
This Safari beta takes it to a whole new level. Not only are they using that dark-gray OS X look that looks completely out of place in Windows, but they’ve gone ahead and included their own fonts, font smoothing tech, etc. Everywhere. The sidebars are all Aqua, and the preference windows even roll out like they do in OS X. All of the form elements are aqua-ized. The look works in OS X, but is completely out of place in Windows. BLEH. Check it:
Here are a couple more screenshots. The first screenshot is using Internet Explorer, which obviously uses native Windows fonts and font smoothing. The second is Safari using its foreign fonts, font smoothing, etc. that make it look completely out of place in Windows town.
What I don’t understand is why when Microsoft brings apps over to the Mac (like Messenger, Office, etc.) they go out of their way to adapt the application to the OS X interface. Apple, on the other hand, insists on recreating their entire interface in Windows, with all of the additional rendering overhead that results in. If you do download the Safari beta, try resizing the window. Next stop, chopsville. Also, if you’re in Vista, try minimizing the window. While all other applications will fade down towards the taskbar, Safari just disappears. And when you restore the window, the window redraws itself in chunks. BLEH.
If Apple is going to bring apps over to Windows, they need to do it right. Suck it up a bit, realize that while OS X and its applications are nice to look at, Vista and its applications are also nice to look at, and adapting their application to the visual style of the target OS will turn out a higher quality, more aesthetically pleasing app. Porting over your entire look and feel is slow, ugly and gives Apple software a bad name.
