I get asked by a lot of my switcher friends what alternatives to iTunes exist for the Mac. While I personally don’t mind iTunes at all, I understand that some people are thrown off by Apple’s handling of software on Windows in general. So, I have decided to take a look at some of the other music players available for the Mac so that I could come up with a decent answer the next time around. I am looking at basic music playback and Internet radio support, not iPod management or video capabilities necessarily.

The applications under the microscope are Whamb, VLC, ToolPlayer and Cog. The review is quite focused, so for a full feature list, look at the software’s site (linked in every case) or download any of these applications — after all, they are free — and give them a spin. Then come back and tell me about your experience.

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iTunes will, every so often, decide to lose track of some of my songs. This hasn’t happened often and generally it always fixed itself up after me indicating where just one of those songs was. But last night, things got a whole lot different. A relatively simple fix later, everything’s back to normal. What I lost? Play Counts :(

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So the new iTunes is out. It has some minor visual changes which do look good and additional sections for the Library that make sense, such as Movies and TV Shows - since Apple is now providing [most of] those through IMS.

Upon re-scanning my collection it is now [still] performing a ‘Gapless Reduction’ thing, I assume to calculate silence at beginning/end of tracks for cross-fades etc. The IMS now also contains album artwork - I am uncertain whether only for music bought on there or generally, but since I don’t have an account set-up I will refrain from testing this right away. Certainly someone will do it soon enough.

In terms of new video content, the update to QuickTime 7.1.3 must be applied as well but that requires a reboot and I don’t want to waste my precious uptime on that :)

Anyway, I’m sure there’s more features to discover and enjoy. Oh, is it only me or CD Text support is new as well?