digital music/video
04/24/2006, 1:50pm, EDT
Monday, April 24th
Open-source Puma takes on iTunes
A developer today announced the arrival of Puma 0.3.1, an open-source media player set to compete with Songbird and iTunes. Still in its early sages, Puma takes a difference stance on modern media player design. "I don't believe that the current standard in user interface is 'how it should be,' and I've got a school full of college students that agree with me," wrote Puma author Nick Meyer. "Web browsers look alike because Web browser interface design has been evolving for a long time, that's not the case with media players. There's plenty of room for improvement and Puma hopes to address those design issues." Songbird -- an open-source alternative to Apple's iTunes -- had industry watchers speculating in early February whether iTunes' real competitor would be a corporation or an open-source project. Apple has managed to retain its hold on the digital music industry, however, and recently celebrated its one-billionth download. The author hopes to have a working version of Puma available for Mac OS X in the near future. Puma 0.3.1 is available for free, and requires Microsoft Windows as well a Java 5.0 JRE.
Filed under: industry
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NOT!
The last major challenge iTunes had either on Windows or the Mac was Audion, which never really gained a lot of ground, but did have some interesting features that could have given iTunes a run for its mone if they just made it easier to use.
Of course, being open source, I can see this winding up like most open source projects: full of features regular users would never use, and missing features regular users want but won't see because the users can't program and the community has no desire or motivation to add them.
So why is this story here? It has nothing to do with Mac's.
OK, so it plays music - which iTunes does - so OMG its related, its a iTunes killer.... oh, wait, no.
Why do I bother with this site?
...but what the fuck is this shit?