Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the iPod a proprietary player built by a company that thrives on maintaining closed standards and actively tries to prevent the Linux community from using its hardware, particularly the iPod itself?  Isn't the iPod just an over-hyped extremely expensive mp3/video player with some wifi capabilities?
I'm just surprised I guess at the ubiquitousness of such an anti-open-source product from an anti-open-source company among users of an open-source operating system.  On top of that, the new Amarok 2 looks eerily similar to iTunes.
Brand loyalty and fad-worship among Linux users.....wtf is going on here???

More importantly, does anyone really care?
"Open source" doesn't have to mean absolutely no contact with anything proprietary what-so-ever!
Do you drive a self-built car?

People are free to choose whatever they like, and as long as they do, creative coders will continue to find ways to support these products. In fact, you could say that by doing so, they're striking their own little blows.

(I'd really have to question these people that look at A2 as an iTunes ripoff though... generally those that say this haven't had much exposure to iTunes, in my experience. On the other hand, due to the awesome efforts of many people, I can now use Amarok as an alternative on my macbook - where's the downside?)

Oh, and I find the expression "apple ****" highly offensive. A computer is a tool - doesn't require intimacy.

My mistake, I guess I just get really riled up when I see open source projects kowtow to shameless commercialism and brand-worship instead of coming up with original, creative, and better ideas.
I don't mind cooperation with proprietary technology, but only when it's in the interests of advancing the progress of open source, or making it more usable for people until the open source community can create something better.  What Amarok has done is try to ride the coat tails of a popular proprietary product, without contributing anything useful to the open-source community by doing so.  Creative coders?  I seriously question the level of creativity it took to take what was a great application and turn it into a tarted up hussy pretending to be something it's clearly not. 
As far as the iPod itself goes, Apple has gone out of their way to try and make it NOT work on Linux, and this isn't a secret, so why a Linux user would pay hundreds of dollars for a piece of hardware designed NOT to work with their chosen operating system, when they could pay far less for something that has the same features and works just fine with Linux, is totally mind-boggling to me.  The reason is obvious: everyone wants to be cool and hip and have the latest gadget, even if it's technically inferior and philosophically bankrupt.  Reminds me a lot of Windows in fact....
Fads, financial elitism, brand-worship, these are all antithetical to the open-source movement, and they are all hallmarks of the Apple movement.  It isn't surprising then that when some warlocks get together and try to mix the two, we end up with the anti-christ that is Amarok 2.0.

So you don't see it as a challenge, when given a piece of proprietary hardware, to MAKE it work with what you want, rather than having to use the software with which it came?

opensourcesociety,

I just read your latest bog post as well as this entry. I have absolutely no issue with you not liking Amarok 2.0.0. It is a very new piece of software that is nearly a complete code rewrite from 1.4.x, and we have been very clear that it is not yet ready to replace 1.4.x for all people as it is still missing some featues hat some people depend on.

"Isn't the iPod just an over-hyped extremely expensive mp3/video player with some wifi capabilities?"

Yes! But there are still a ton of them out there. Rather than trying to support Apple in any way (when asked we actually strongly recommend against buying an iPod because of Apples recent db lockdown fiasco) we are trying to free the current iPod owners from having to use their player with a proprietary application that does not work on all platforms. This is actually very much in the spirit of the free software community and has very little todo with "Brand loyalty and fad-worship" on our part.

Also, I will reply to some of the things in your "Amarok 2.0: A Step Backwards?" blog here since I cannot post a reply to the blog without login in (and I have way_ to many logins all over the palce already)

I would argue that the overall layout of Amarok 1.4.x is a hell of a lot closr to iTuens than Amarok 2. Most of us devs have had very litlle or no exposure to iTunes, and making Amarok 2 look like iTunes has never been a goal. In fact, many of us have made it a point no to look to closely at other players. We do have a few devs who use mack, but their main motivation for hacking on Amarok 2 is getting away from iTunes, so if anything, this pulls in exacltly the opposite direction.

"Fads, financial elitism, brand-worship, these are all antithetical to the open-source movement, and they are all hallmarks of the Apple movement.  It isn't surprising then that when some warlocks get together and try to mix the two, we end up with the anti-christ that is Amarok 2.0."

Seriously dude, that is just trolling, plain and simple. I will say again that Apple and iTunes has had almost no impact on the development of Amarok 2, except for the one GSoC student working on media device support which includes support for iPods. At one point there was a prototype cover flow inspired thingie, but that neve rmade t off the ground. Writing inflammatory comments like this is what in my opinion gives the free software community a bad name, as it is what the opponets point to when they want to lablel its members as raving fanatics and trolls!

My sincere apologies, my intention was definitely not to troll.  However, I think you will understand that these comments, while maybe a little excessive, were made from a state of extreme disappointment with the latest release.  Seriously guys, you rained on my KDE4 parade!
I can understand wanting to give iPod users an alternative to the software they are practically forced to use.  What frustrates me is how many people I see whining that their iPod doesn't work on Linux, as if this is somehow the fault of Linux.  It isn't Amarok's fault that apple has closed off their hardware and device protocols, and Linux users should do their homework before buying a media device that costs a lot of money for no reason and doesn't play well with others.  So let it be said that in my humble opinion, I don't think accommodating apple hardware should be a primary focus of Amarok development.
There are some positive things in this release, and I tried to highlight them in my blog article.  I will readily admit I should not have been so harsh in my judgement.  However, I don't think I am alone in thinking that the project would have been better suited by just tweaking the minor things here and there that people have requested for 1.4, instead of reinventing the wheel into something akin to an oval

Fair enough, but you need to realise this isn't something that's just happened overnight - no-one flicked a switch and suddenly A2 was born. Development has been going on for well over a year, having to work around changes in KDE4 & QT4 as they happened, and things are by no means finished yet.
Part of the problem (in my opinion) is that distros have decided to start bundling A2 as their default version, instead if sticking with A1.4 and offering A2 as an alternative. Obviously there are practical reasons for this, but it's meant that A2 has basically been released with only the bare bones, much of the work is still being done, and some of it is still waiting on parts of KDE4. One positive aspect though, is that there's more exposure to ordinary users, hence the large number of ipod etc problems cluttering the forum. It's really quite disproportional to the amount of time spent on actually developing FOR ipod support - most of which is done by a completely different team, the people behind libgpod.

In the meantime, sticking with A1.4 is very much the recommendation if you're not ready for A2, or if A2 is not ready for you, but criticism without any constructive comment really isn't helping anything at the moment. Perhaps you could offer something more than "I just want A1.4 on KDE4"?
Note I haven't read your blog - time constraints. If you've been more constructive there, then my apologies.

I don't want to come off as overly negative (too late!), so here are some things I liked about the 2.0 release:

-Album covers as the "bullet" in album listings under artist name.
-Multimedia key shortcuts finally work (under kde3 and amarok 1.4, I had to hack up some DCOP calls to get this to work, but KDE4 has dumped the DCOP system so this isn't possible now).

Sadly that's the end of the positive list, but I don't want to diminish how important these improvements are.  Nevertheless, there are some things I think need improvement:

-The Buttons: no offense guys but I don't get it at all.  It would be great if we had an option for "classic" view or something.  Specifically I actually find it difficult to make sure I'm clicking the right button for play/pause/skip, which could be a personal issue, could be a design issue.
-The Center Panel: I get the idea is to encourage some widget design, but again an option to turn this off would be good.
-Collection Import: This plain doesn't work, I put more details about this on my blog, but basically I'm really not thrilled with the prospect of having the reorganize my collection from scratch.  The fact that the script reports it "successfully" imported 0 items is almost infuriating.
-Collection Browser: Clumsy at best, it's showing the daap: collection someone else on my network is sharing, which is neat, but i need to be able to hide that.  When I started going through to organize my files again, every time I made a change the tree would collapse all the way back down again.  Again, very frustrating behavior to say the least.

Some things that got dropped from the previous version that are missed:

-Context Panel: Where did this go?  I *loved* this feature in 1.4, and I guess we're hoping someone will recreate it in a widget?
-Storage Backends: I'm not sure what sort of storage backend 2.0 is using.  I liked the mysql backend in 1.4 because it allowed me to do all sorts of other cool things with the database.  Will we have this option in the future?

Like some other people I reverted back to the previous version after a few hours, but I think I'll be reinstalling and running them side by side so I can put in some bug reports.

-The Buttons:
This was something we wanted to try. We are aware that is not exactly a success, so these _will_ change at some point. In general, many things about the look and artwork will get modified in the coming releases.

-The Center Panel:
You can resize it to 0 width by using the drag handles (its a bit tricky, but doable)

-Collection Import:
Bug! This really should work, but a detailed bug report would be appreciated!

-Collection Browser:
DAAP really should be configurable. Its on our todo somewhere. As for the collapsing tree, yes, this is a major nuisance, unfortunately it is not techincally trivial to fix with the new Qt stuff.. We are working on this one as well.

-Context Panel:
All the stuff that was there will eventually make it into the context view.

-Storage Backends:
Amarok 2 is using MySQL embedded. This gives us all the speed of MySQL with no setup needed for most users. We have dropped sqlite and postres completely, but external MySQL databses support wil make it back (basically just needs a GUI for configuring this as it is supported by MySQL embedded)

Also, don't underestimate the speed of development at the moment. 2.0.1 which will be released in a few short weeks already brings back many dearly loved 1.4.x features such as playlist searching/filtering, stop after track and queueing. We also have very big plans for the customizability of the playlist going forwards (I will likely start to work on thi as soon as the last few bits I want in 2.0.1 is in place) and I have other git branches with good stuff for 2.1.x

I can't seem to find the bug-tracker for Amarok, could someone point me to it and I will submit a report about the collection browser?  Thanks!

http://bugs.kde.org, there is an amarok category. remember to make it against 2.0.0

I don't know how many others are in the same situation I am, but the iPod interfaces with my car stereo much better than any other USB device.  It gets to the point where it isn't just a trendy piece of equipment, but it's what a lot of other systems are being built around.  Sure I can plug any USB storage device into the system, and it will work, but not with the same integration, and usability.  Quite honestly if I bought a car stereo that supported a different mp3 player more than it supported the iPod I'd probably spring for that instead of the iPod.  I just haven't found that any other player integrates with the controls, and other features in either of the 2 car stereos I have as well as the iPod does.