Why don't apples come with a better media player?

I am coming from the PC world but I dislike the quick time player. It doesn't seem like it was designed with ease of use and seems much inferior to the windows media player.

Also why wont it let you full screen a video etc? I read that pro does this but you have to pay for it extra? Is there a better media player? I found a wiki article and it looks like microsoft no longer makes a mac version of the windows media player.

 

Yah, go get VLC player. It's pretty decent.
There are other players out there as well I believe. It is ****ty of apple to make youg et a pro version to get full screen abilities.

 

Yeah, just get VLC. The QuickTime player isn't that great and hasn't seen any specific improvements in a while.

 

It seems strange that they don't update it when microsoft makes a big upgrade like there new media player 11 which is fantastic. I have used VLC to play dvd's before but never anything else such as audio files.

How is quicktime for playing media? I'm looking for something that is as nice and easy to use as windows media player 10 or 11 if possible. I have over 5k mp3's and wma audio files I need to always be able to sort through.

 

iTunes is the audio media player you are suposed to use. These wma of yours... not sure how it will handle them. Too bad people only care for open standarts when faced with problems. Of course, this goes for Apple DRM as well. DRM (and closed standarts) is bad mainly because of the vendor lock in.

 

What is DRM?

I thought itunes was only for buying music?

 

No, iTunes is a media player as well; quite good IMO, but if you like WMP, then perhaps you won't fancy it much. Anyways, try it since it is built in.
DRM stands for Digital Rights (or Restrictions?) Management. Some sort of mechanism usually built in media files to disallow unauthorized copies or other uses that the media was not intented for - such as listening to a "plays for sure" wma file under a Mac or ,the irony, a MS Zune.

 

Yeah, I think the QuickTime player itself has fallen by the wayside because most of Apple's development focus is on iTunes (which is increasingly becoming Apple's catch-all media player, given that it now supports video as well).

I think the QuickTime player is bundled now more just as it's a standard app, really, but if you're looking for Apple's equivalent to WMP, it is really iTunes.

I don't use WMA much (I use primarily MP3 and AAC), but I believe that iTunes will automatically convert any WMA files you have so they can be played within it.

I haven't kept up much on alternative music players for OS X; there used to be more (stuff like Audion from Panic), but I think iTunes has been so successful that maybe there isn't as much interest in music player development from third parties.

 

Funny, I've heard nothing but complaints about WMP 10 and 11. I used to use 9 and prefered that to other apps on the PC. It's a shame that Winamp became such utter crap after v3.

It does handle WMA just fine. But you might want to make sure that you set your iTunes preferences to rip to mp3 instead of AAC. That way you can actually burn them to CD and work in any mp3 cd player.

But it will take a while to get used to iTunes if you have been using WMP. It's got a completely different workflow, but it's nice.

 

I don't like how iTunes always adds songs to the library when you play them. What if a friend sent me some stupid sound byte and I just want to play it before I delete it? Or... if I download some piece of media from some website, and just want to listen to it once or twice before stashing it away on some hdd or deleteing it... iTunes just assumes I'm keeping it in that same place forever (and since I sync my entire (small) library with my iPod) that I want it on my iPod.

For video, I'll also recommend VLC, or maybe Mplayer, as free not-gimpy players. I guess there's always Front Row for fullscreen video playback, though it's limited to support for whatever video formats Quicktime supports.

 

You know that the check marks are there to tell iTunes which files to transfer over to your ipod right? I just uncheck the files I don't want and it won't transfer them. There maybe a setting you have to change in your ipod settings under iTunes for that though.

But hrm... I didn't think iTunes added material to your library if you were just playing it. But then again, I don't generally play music I don't already know I'm keeping.

 

Yeah, that is definitely an annoyance. Generally on my PC I just don't actually associate .mp3 files with iTunes, but instead with another music playing app. When I just want to try out a song I just play it with some other mp3 player, and I drag music that I want to add to my iTunes library only when I specifically want to. On OS X I'll usually just drag a music file over the quicktime player or play it in the Finder or something.

 

windows media player 11 is absolute crap, my mom has it on her wintel...they got rid of the menu at the top of the screen and my mom spent like a half an hour looking for it.

 

They did the same withe the new outlook and possibly some other office apps.

Aparantly they're trying to move to a contextual menu system like OS X, but are failing miserably.

Silly Microsoft.

 

I'm not really sure that would specifically be OS X-like; I mean, OS X still has traditional menus, just that there is always an everpresent menubar at the top of the screen.

For what it's worth, I actually like the UI in Word 2007. One of the first things MS has done with their UI design that I've liked in quite a while (and I think Word 2007 and the upcoming Word 2008 for Mac OS X might be my favorite versions since Word 5.1 for the old Mac back in the day).

 

iTunes uses Quicktime for its playback. That is why it is part of the iTunes install on Windows.

For the OP, mplayer or VLC are good for video and iTunes is good for audio

 

Yeah, I more meant on the OS X side.

I'm not sure if it's still true, but at least originally, the other element of QuickTime for Windows is that, aside from the media functionality, it actually contains a significant subset of the Mac OS APIs. At least originally, this was part of why QuickTime was necessary for iTunes, because they essentially used it to make it easier to port iTunes to Windows.

This may or may not be the case any more though.

 

When I play .mp3 files over the network itunes copies the music. Where is it copying it to? I want it in a nice orderly fashion I can easily copy and backup later onto dvd's.

 

It's copying it into whatever directory you have specified as your Music library (and if you keep the option checked to keep your music library "organized", it will sort all the music in that directory into directories based on artist and album names).

 

Because Windows is better for multimedia.

Let the flames begin!

j/k

 

OMG you are the anti-christ! lol j/k

I'm sure there is good software for all of them, you just have to find it.

 

no comment.

 

if you burn the mp3 disc inside of itunes, it doesn't matter if it is aac or mp3, it will burn the disc as mp3.

i assume you mean that it will work in any mp3 player, if you prefer to burn them direct from the hard drive, and not from within itunes.

 

They burn as whatever format they are. When I burn an mp3 disc in itunes, I can only play the tracks that are mp3s. All the songs I ripped as ACC won't play, as they are still aac.

 

hmm, guess i am going to have to try it more specifically.

 

Since others already mentioned VLC, I'll mention MPlayer - I use it and love it on all platforms (Linux, OS X and even Windows the few times I use it). It's rare that I find something it won't play.