Songbird releases iPhone Sync Workaround

Written by Dana Oshiro / June 18, 2009 11:01 AM / 8 Comments

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Open-source Mozilla-based music player Songbird just announced a slew of new features including the long anticipated ability to get music onto the iPhone. But there's a catch. In the past, Songbird was unable to export to the iPhone, as Apple purposely encrypted the device to keep music files within their proprietary ecosystem. Meanwhile, Songbird has always had the ability to sync with iPods. For this workaround, rather than syncing directly to the iPhone, the player syncs to iTunes and allows for export and import from there. So why open both players rather than just iTunes? It's pretty simple. Cross platform and multi-device compatibility.

To the average user, multi-device compatibility and cross format file support is really only important when they've got a party full of people and an iPod full of unplayable files. Listening should be seamless, and this is not the case on any player. Still despite it's long flight full of crashes, Songbird is attempting to break music out its proprietary formatting silos and into our ears, where it belongs. It's obvious that those who've followed Songbird's road to 1.2 may be disappointed in this iPhone workaround. It certainly isn't the magic iphone integration Songbird users have been asking for, but for now, it's a working solution.While the player is perhaps still a potential iTunes competitor, the company is the first to admit that it's a long way off.

Additional features with the 1.2 release include automatic organization for library files, Last.FM radio play within the Songbird browser and a 10-band equalizer so users can tweak playback and frequency. The company appears to have fixed a number of bugs in this new release as well; however, although this may not be in as high demand as it once was, users are still waiting for CD ripping capabilities.

The disadvantages and advantages of an open source player of this magnitude are obvious. Building a community-based media player is a nebulous task to say the least. However, the advantage is that once the skeleton of the player is up, the community can contribute new features like this miniplayer as well as more simple additions like skins. To test out the new release download it here.

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Comments

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stupid. why have two players open? and your answer is, cause, it cool to be retarded. Song bird sucks; firefox sucks, and mozilla sucks. i know, i code, i know the code base; all it is is dying and the people who support it are the same open source ynix retards thinking their systems is consumer friendly.

just die already; coders like me will steal/hold the code, and go through it when we need to steal something.

Posted by: lemon obrien | June 18, 2009 1:59 PM

Tell me how you really feel. I respect your opinion about the product, but it's sort of upsetting to hear you call the community "retards" and then turn around and use their code for your own projects.

Posted by: Dana Oshiro | June 18, 2009 2:06 PM

@lemon obrien
At best your an ignorant thief and a hack.

I questions your ability when you say you are a coder.
Most coders I know tend to have some moral center, and this is something that you apparently lack.

I have just taken a look at the site you have attached to your name. and the U.I. is no better than the very applications that you so illiterately attempted to insult.

Since you have openly said that you "Steal" code; I would like to call on all artist and users and coders of mozailla and firefox to boycott your sites and anything that you might put out in the future.

I also want to alert all of the open source organizatons and the lawyers that work for them that you have admited that you steal open source code.

Posted by: william | June 19, 2009 2:34 AM

What surprises me is how slow progress on Songbird has been - this isn't the fault of anyone actually working on the project - I'm just have thought more people (including some rival MP3 player manufacturers) would have been interested on working on the core software, rather than the plug-ins.

As for Lemon - your post gives me every confidence that you're a better 'coder' than those working on the Mozilla core.

Posted by: JulesLt | June 19, 2009 3:24 AM

Lemon... you're right. It's just sooooo dumb. Why would you want to use both of them? It's a total waste of time.
Oh, and firefox does suck... big time.
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Posted by: susu | June 19, 2009 7:18 AM

Thank you.

I was searching for this..

Posted by: Mark2009x | June 21, 2009 2:42 AM

All the sour lemon speak aside, Song Bird does a lot better when it comes to web-based music, I use it a lot to tune in to music blogs and sites like Skreemr.

While it may be totally legal, it's also very useful the way in which it lets you download songs. A lot like the Peel app.

The easy of which you can interact with stuff like YammerFox and delicious really makes FF a joy to use too.

Posted by: Kristoffer H | June 23, 2009 1:12 PM

FlyBy Music can do this already. I don't understand what the big deal is. For all I care, they are behind, because FlyBy doesn't even enforce you to have a desktop client

Posted by: larry | July 8, 2009 12:21 AM