Yesterday, after nearly 2 years of hard work, blood sweat and tear, we finally released Amarok 2.0.0. Reactions so far have been mixed, but this was no worse than we had expected. We are drastically reworking an application that many people are very fond of, and taking it in a very different direction, and for some people this will not be the direction that they had preferred. Also, some of the features that some people depend on in the 1.4.x series are not yet in Amarok 2, and while we have tried being very upfront about this, apparently it is still a big shock to some.
One of the things that has been most controversial so far, is the new look. This has spawned a number of mockups from people who have ideas for way to improve Amarok. Some of these are really good! See these pages for some examples:
http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/A+Media+Player+for+KDE4?content=94472
http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php/Amarok2+Look+and+Feel?content=93854
From the comments on some of these mockups, its is quite clear however that we face somewhat of an issue of understanding. Comments like
I like your mock =)
It looks 100 times better then current amarok which has usability = 0.
BUT
I can almost guarantee that this will never happen...
Amarok developers are quite "strange" people... It's their way or the highway.
Hey if they were not then amarok 2 would not bad as it does today. =/
and
Amarok already has chosen a look and at best changes now are going to be evolutionary rather than revolutionary.
besides being quite degrading to all the people who have worked very hard on Amarok 2.0.0, to me indicates a profound lack of understanding of the amount of work it takes to actually turn a good mockup into a working look for an application, especially from the artist.
So while we get really nice mockups from time to time that we would love to implement, few of the artists so far has been willing to stick with us to do the actual hard, boring and repetitive work required to actually make it happen. Hence the term "Drive-by Mockups".
So is there a point to this rant? I am not sure. I certainly dont want people to stop making mockups as some of these contain really good ideas, but I would ask people to not attribute to malice or stupidity from our side what is simply caused by few artist having the time and being willing to follow up on their mockups.
