Wednesday, October 29. 2008Amarok 2 on OS X, now with more sexy
Ever since I switched to the dark side and bought a macbook pro this spring, I've had slight trouble developing (and using) Amarok 2 and KDE4. Imagine my frustration as I spent a week cycling through all possible permutations of {VirtualBox, Fusion, Parallels} and {Ubuntu, OpenSuse, Mandriva} trying to get a development environment that didn't make my eyes bleed (or my computer choke).
Anyway, after approximately 7 months, I have been able to finally use Amarok as it was meant to be used: native on OS X!  How did I do this, you ask? The KDE Mac Site However, if you want to be able to build a collection (as I have in the screenshot above), you'll need to compile/install mysql manually (following instructions for MySqlE). But just out of the box, I got perfect audio, low CPU/memory usage.. and in general awesomeness. In other news, I have locally switched Amarok from using our old last.fm code to a brand new snapshot that will provide much more long-term stability. This should resolve the various last.fm bugs that have been around the Amarok code for quite a while. and you can see the result here:  Finally, if you are still wondering what other crazy stuff you can do with amarok, look no further:  let me give my huge thanks to our very own illogic-al, who has dedicated more brain cells to packaging amarok/kde on os x than i would like to count, and who is officially awesome. Trackbacks
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Nice job. Amarok is a fantastic app but damn; the last screenshot could make anyone claustrophobic just by looking at it. The panes could use more distinct lines to indicate separation.
I have to agree.. with one column of applets it's at least decipherable.. with more than one it's ugly as hell. It'll have to be something to look at long term.
yes, agreed. this is definitely not optimal, it looks really cluttered
Is last.fm going to use KDE's proxy settings? Currently I have to hardcode my proxy settings in LastFmSettings.cpp to be able to scrobble tracks.
About last.fm: It would be awesome if someone could implement a way to mix last.fm with local songs in the playlist. E.g. I'd like to be able to say that I want to play 2 songs from my neighbor radio, then a local song and then 3 songs from my personal radio. Or I want a smart playlist that plays 50% local songs and 50% last.fm songs that are fitting my local collection, etc. Is anything like this planned?
this looks good. amarok2 is obviously made for wide-screen displays. use it on a standard 4:3-display and it loses a lot of it's sexyness.
the most important content, the music (!) itself, is nearly hidden, somewhere faaar in the right, making drag 'n drop from the browser more complicated than necessary (you have to drag music all across the application). there is a multitude of buttons, boxes, sliders, icons, text-areas and so on, making it look like an "über-tool". don't get me wrong - i love amarok, i use it on a daily basis and i have donated. i will use amarok2, just for the reason that it still remains the best audioplayer available. but, damn, this is just "too much of everything".
Clearly you have not used the Amarok 2. The Amarok has solved this dragging problem and solved it nicely. I could tell you how, but i'll leave it to you to try the Amarok 2 out instead.
As for the "too much of everything", you can have as little as you want.
well, in fact, i'm using amarok2 right now on kubuntu intrepid...
 there are certain features that i like, e.g. the new playlist with integrated album-covers. but i can't help it: the most important thing in a media player is the playlist. it should be in the center (of attention) and not somewhere on the right edge.
That's really a matter of taste. For me the most important thing is the context view with te lyrics and all the other information.
Agree, best thing is the context view, such a huge potential in it ! Amarok developper's rocks
If the context is so important for some users, it should not be forced to be the "important" for everyone.
I Like Amarok 1.4.x because I can in fast way to manage wanted playlists what to play next 1-2 hourhs and then hide window and use shortcuts while I do other things on my computer. I want to listen music, not to play with it. Sometimes I want to see lyrics but it definitely is not the #1 thing. Music player should be #1 a music player not a wikipedia browser. I want to swap the context and playlist windows. I want to remove the Context window and just get the lyrics (if wanted) as widget to desktop itself. And I bet I am not the only one who wants to redesign the Amarok2 UI. Currently it looks too much "Context browser" than music archive browser. Idea and goal is very good in Amarok2, but seems that Amarok2 is designed only for ultimate-music-collecter-owner-who-lives-for-the-music-as-main-purpose. Amarok2 should be made for new users who just want to get their music to play. Nothing else fancy things and this means that context browser is needed to be in situations to removed and get the Library Playlist mode only. Not with Library Context Playlist. Or then swap Library Playlist Context.
Hmm, curious why you didn't just use the native compilers and amarok code to compile (and develop) amarok yourself from the start?
We had a developer work on MacOs on the very early KOffice code for ages without people actually knowing he used a mac.
i tried. oh, how i tried. i finally got kdelibs etc to compile, but i was having major issues with phonon and sound output w/ coreaudio or qt7. it was so much of a pain i just gave up trying, until these packages.
How did you managed to have two columns of applet ? I can't find the option ...
I'm not claustrophobic at all
if you make the context view wide, then add another applet, it adds the new applet in a 2nd column. and then the next applet should be in that same column, completing the grid-like thing.
Well, you didn't ask me but, I'll render my opinion anyway.
Based solely on the screen shots in this post, it appears that Amarok will be the ugliest application to ever run on a Mac. It's hideous and a usability nightmare all rolled into one. Really sad.
Well, you didn't ask me but, I'll render my opinion anyway.
Based solely on the opinions in your post, it appears that you are the dumbest human being to ever live on the earth. You're ignorant and a disrespectful sub-humanoid all rolled into one.
ACH! ZE GOGGLES, ZEY DO NOSSING!!
I'm going to have to agree with SumGuy on this one. That interface is really bad. It looks like a bad X11 interface. I'm sure it's packed with features, but try using it when you really need music... like when you're REALLY high. Then you'll see the genius that is the apple UX.
The interface has already been discussed, so let's talk about something else. You're asking people to download 634 MB of stuff across five packages (amarok, kdelibs, kdeprereqs, kdesupport, qt, from the KDE Mac site you linked) just to run a music player. That's not going to happen.
No actually, that's not what we're asking. He's telling you how he got it.
I can definitely appreciate the huge amount of work developers have put into making v2 this powerful...
But as a big fan of both Amarok and simplicity I wonder if, in the midst of the flurry of features, the flexibility can also be found to easily remove all the context info in the middle by unchecking a few boxes in the conf? Many will love the new interface, and many will not, but it seems to me that it shouldn't be too hard to let both groups use it as they want. Is it possible to make it v1-like with lots of space for the playlist? Thanks again for all your hard work.
Actually you need one file that mysql provides: libmysqlclient. Feel free to delete everything else that comes along with mysql once you install it.
Cheers.
Having actually tried this it doesn't seem to be working.
Then you didn't install mysql before the kde 4.1.2 package. reinstall the kde 4.1.2 package or check /Applications/KDE4
It started once, but never again. The hour glass is on, but the window never comes up. If I open Preferences, and then my home directory, it crashes every time.
When it did start, the window was not resizeable, and I could not browse to my music which is on another disk. I think I fixed the latter by making a symlink to my home directory, but I can't test it due to the crash. Alas.
Now if you'd only report these issues on bugs.kde.org maybe we could get around to doing something about them
This IS awesome. I have been waiting for a proper Music player for the Mac. Not that iTunes is bad but I like having choices and i kinda miss having them in OSX
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