[vorbis] vorbis players (or lack of) for mac

[mike wakerly]

Hey Don,

> On Monday, October 29, 2001, at 07:57 PM, dongoodman wrote:
> Perhaps the devel list would be better, but a) i'm not subscribed to it 
> just now and b) I'm lazy (dons flame-retardant clothing)...
>
> frankly, i'm rather tired of the lack of free ogg vorbis players for 
> Mac OS; it doesn't look like iTunes is going to support the format 
> anytime soon (and i have some real issues with its interface, 
> too)...so, since I've decided to learn Mac OS X/Cocoa programming, I 
> have no excuse for not writing one.

Sounds perfectly on-topic to me, and glad to hear of your endeavor. 
Personally, I know of two ogg players for MacOS X: Mint Audio 
<http://www.unsanity.com/mint/>, and Audion 
<http://www.panic.com/audion>, from Unsanity LLC and Panic Software, 
respectively. (Those names make you think you're a little crazy, eh? heh 
heh.)

Which is not to say that I am happy with either of them... Audion can't 
handle any of my RC2 oggs (Panic says a fix is coming..) and I 
personally can't stand Mint's interface. Since there are so many 
zillions of different mp3 players now, really what will set yours apart 
(aside from ogg support) is largely the interface. I'm thinking of 
playlists in particular, but different people will spot different 
weaknesses. (Audion has some sort of MP3 editor that might be useful to 
some tweakers; I never use the thing.)

As far as MP3 licensing issues, I'd expect that if you use a 
non-Frauenhofer based decoding library (libmad?) then you're in the 
clear.

Though if you're talking about a one-year time frame to public release, 
I should hope a player has come along before then... QuickTime support 
is really needed, and soon, IMHO. (Perhaps they're just waiting for 1.0 
though, understandable.) But if you're writing it for fun anyway, who 
cares?

Cheers,
Mike

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