Allen Brooker (AllenJB)

So I’ve just installed Amarok 2.1. Configured my collection location easy enough, downloaded the alarm script from the scripts library (haven’t tried it yet) and now I set about making it look how I want. I know exactly how I want Amarok 2 to look: Exactly like Amarok 1.4.

I like my spreadsheet layout. It works perfectly for music management. I skipped 2.0 because it had no spreadsheet layout and we were promised it in 2.1. Except it isn’t there. You’re still forced into the 3 pane layout that tries to shove everything the world knows about the currently playing track down your throat.

I almost got rid of the 3 pane layout. When the left pane (collection / playlists / etc) is hidden, you can drag the splitter bar all the way to the left and the “now playing” pane disappears. Then I opened the collection pane again. *poof* The “now playing” pane rears its ugly head again.

I hope this is a bug, and that it’ll be fixed in the next update, but at this point I wouldn’t bet my life on it.

I then went to the playlists to set up the same dynamic playlists I have in Amarok 1.4 (”Everything” and several label-based lists that I switch between depending on my mood). While looking around, I did something which made Amarok very angry (whoring the CPU) and froze the UI. This is 2009 people: USE ANOTHER THREAD AND INFORM ME WHAT YOU’RE DOING!

After several long minutes, Amarok finally came back to life and I continue my investigations. There’s no “entire collection” playlist. There’s no label based dynamic playlists. What we have instead is some weird bias stuff I don’t understand (and have no inclination to learn).

On a hunch, I get a track into the playlist and get into the “Edit track details” window. There is no labels tab. I check the other tabs. There are no labels. Well done devs. Another useful feature dropped.

So I won’t be moving my main desktop to Amarok 2 yet, because yet again the KDE developers have delivered something that’s half finished and missing useful features which were there in previous incarnations. To me it seems they’ve gone all gooey-eyed over how shiny it looks without a care in the world that people actually want some functionality out of it.

I really wish I had the time to fork some of these projects (or rebuild them from scratch) and do it right. Amarok joins the KDE desktop on the list of projects I’d fork if I had time, both for the same reasons: OOOOHHHHHHH SHINY! What? You want to actually use our application? You don’t need to use it! Just sit back and enjoy the SHINY!

Edit: All posts which recommend any media player which doesn’t have label-based dynamic playlist support will be deleted. This is the one key feature that I love about Amarok 1.4 and I won’t be moving to any media player that doesn’t have it.