[Feedback] What did you do with Amarok?

[Jeff Mitchell]

Marc Hollenbach wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I think the big picture got lost in this discussion - it is not so much
> about missing features than about missing functionality.

They're not really different. Features add functionality. And any
functionality is a feature.

> 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.

Suggestion: don't use Ubuntu.

Seriously, as has been said many, many times on this list before: our
2.0 release announcement made it *very clear* that 2.0 was the very
start of a total rewrite, that it lacked huge amounts of features found
in 1.4, and that they would be added back in future revisions.

Most distros waited until 2.1 to upgrade, and as a result most users
were happy. If you are unhappy with your distro's choice, complain to
your distro, and ask them not to ship software that is very clearly
meant for advanced users willing to help us test things out.

(Also, please don't try the tired "but then why did you release it in
such a state?" line -- the answer can be found many times on this
mailing list, and essentially boils down to "we had a bunch of RCs" and
"we wanted to actually work on improving things instead of extending a
six-month feature freeze".)


> For the shop I have had no other way then going bad to 1.4

Okay...use what works, what's the problem?

> 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.

Not a clue what this means.

> They say they can surf to their favourite web pages to listen
> to web radio and do not need Amarok for that.

What does this have to do with anything? (And lots and lots of people
like integration so that they don't have to have Amarok open and also
surf to a web page.)

> 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.

Better sorting is coming in 2.2. I'm not sure how many more times we can
say "functionality will be returning in future releases."

> Therefore it needs a killer feature for me to get back to them with
> Amarok 2.x in the Bar.

What features are "killer" depends entirely upon your point of view. It
certainly has more features than 1.4 did, overall, including plenty of
new ones that did not exist in 1.4. Many of these new features are
"killer" for some.

> 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.
> 
> Thank you for reading, keep up your work and help me giving them a
> killer application that Amarok used to be!

You're just another whiny user reiterating the same thing that's been
said a bazillion times on this list ("man, you guys fucked it up"), with
a bazillion direct and indirect insults ("...killer application that
Amarok used to be") so that we can give the same answer that we've given
a bazillion times on this list ("next time read the release notes,
dumbass"). With the cherry on top of telling us how we're the reason his
friends went back to Windows.

Seriously, this is supposed to *motivate* us?

If you want to motivate us to continue working and making it better and
adding back features, how about some, I don't know, *constructive*
criticism, or maybe even a "thanks for spending your time and effort on
this purely volunteer project, I know you guys got a lot of harsh
feedback on 2.0, but 2.1 really improved over 2.0 and I'm really looking
forward to a ton of improvements in 2.2 as well".

Otherwise, go away.

--Jeff

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