Hi,<br><br>I think the big picture got lost in this discussion - it is not so much about missing features than about missing functionality.<br>More and more users are just users no specialists or geeks like it used to be in the past. More and more people get hold of Netbooks or Laptops Desktops and Servers running on Linux due to the great work of the distros to deliver a pretty pain free installation even next to windows. There is a huge difference to the older group - they want to use a computer to do what they always did with their computers in the past. I may can explain to them that this is no I-tunes clone and therefore the cover switch mode is not existing, but when It's hard to create and sort play lists or you are having difficulties scanning your library to get some music at all playing, than this is a bout functionality not missing features.<br>
<br>My girlfriend has a Bar and needed some replacement of the Music-PC.<br>They have been using I-tunes for the time before and had no intention to switch to something else... I convinced them that free software is an alternative and installed the latest LTS Version of Ubuntu, added some Amarok, Ruby, Codecs and added the <a href="http://last.fm">last.fm</a> account data.<br>
I told them with every song you listen the Player will understand better what you want to listen. They liked the idea and they had at least a hundred questions concerning the player. None of them needed any support from devs or forums. Feature wise like a Microsoft product, 1000 of functions, but not used due to the fact that they haven't been explained or well positioned. After 3 months of complains I was thru and the staff was happy using Amarok.<br>
<br>One girl likes to work on her play list every day and needed some help in saving them without duplicating them. All of them had a problem with the tab's and drag 'n drop is still a problem. They prefer the double or even triple click on the artist name... (a windows asking them what they really want would be so cool, but this not a feature request)<br>
<br>The library is about 35000 Songs ripped by me slowly one by one from Cd's. Amarok helped me to keep the tags up to date with a perfect list view, which was even customisable and had nice shortcuts for non mouse users. I allowed the staff to rip Cd's themselves, but before adding them finally to the library I was keeping them for tagging reasons in a separated folder. When I was done I added them to local collection and the database was clean. <br>
<br>GREAT WORK! Two staff members wanted to get rid of their windows and have Amarok!!! (Which I unfortunately did for them)<br><br>The drama started when they did upgrade their Ubuntus and got in contact with KDE4 and Amarok 2.0 with poor sound support due to Ubuntu. They also couldn't use their I-Pods anymore. They found Amarok changing their play list (forgetting that the played with the dynamic play list feature last night) and they also realized that some songs did not show up anymore and that they made even a bigger mess using the functions that are there, but not or still poorly working. (add/ to collection)<br>
<br>I kept images of their windows machines and reinstalled them, I'm not able and willing to do software support - I'm a newbie myself and not so confident to convince them to try again.<br><br>For the shop I have had no other way then going bad to 1.4<br>
I did not check any bug reports, but for me the collections scanner is just too sensitive when it comes to corrupted files. It a murder job to find singles files within more than 40000 files now, just to scan your collection. I did it and replaced them all with perfect copies. It took me more than a month and still I could not explain what the mid pane is good for. They say they can surf to their favourite web pages to listen to web radio and do not need Amarok for that. They also couldn't make sense of the play list sorting - yes that one girl has a "standard-play-list" with 1800 files. She used to play that list over and over just changing the sorting of the playlist.<br>
<br>On the laptop I have my Amarok
2.1.1 on Jaunty now with the feeling that most of the things are improving a lot in short time, but a lot was lost Therefore it needs a killer feature for me to get back to them with Amarok 2.x in the Bar. My two friends are lost - they will get some windows 7 and be happy with i-tunes again :-( Overall I have to say that Amarok 2 goes towards a good direction, but sometimes I experience it still as not as much as pleasure than it could/should/will! be. <br>
<br>Thank you for reading, keep up your work and help me giving them a killer application that Amarok used to be!<br><br>Marc<br>