sometimes, i really hate computers. in particular, when wanting to hear music on my macbook, which runs osx. so far, i haven’t found any good music player.
the first thing i tried is itunes. it seems to be nice, but it’s support for an externally managed music library (i want to synchronize the library between several computers, whence i cannot let itunes organize the library) is sucking. there is a way to scan an existing directory with music, but it is incredibly slow. maybe one second per file? at least, this is not acceptable.
on linux, i’m using amarok, which has a lot of bugs, but runs pretty neat otherwise. (so far the best thing i found.) version 2.0 is supposed to be available on osx, too, but i’ve waiting for that one since more than a year, and it’s still not there. there’s a version which you can compile yourself, but it will compile for more than 24 hours, as it requires all the kde libraries. i don’t want to do that.
another choice is exaile, an amarok clone for gtk (gnome), which i have to try under linux. at least, under osx, i’ve not been able to run it, i have several python versions installed due to fink and darwinports, but it needs some more libraries and i don’t want to spend hours or days or weeks to find out which ones and how to install them.
well, and then, there’s xmms, a winamp 2.x clone, more or less dead for a long time. but i got it installed (via fink or darwinport, forgot which one), but my version features non-readable mp3 id3 tags and certain other quirks. but at least, it runs and plays music.
it really, really annoys me that it seems not to be able to install a decent player without spending lots of time. why on earth no one is able to provide a precompiled package for amarok? or make exaile run on osx? or any other more or less decent music player? why just itunes and xmms?!
i have even considered throwing osx away and installing something like ubuntu on my macbook, but that also sucks, as ubuntu might have problems with the wireless network, and then i have to find out how to set up an encrypted hard disk, which is possible but requires some more work than just five minutes.
when does the new age of computing begins, where one does not has so much trouble anymore?
i’m completely pissed of. seriously.