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Winamp shutdown yesterday. Even though I hadn’t used it in years, this makes me a little sad, as Winamp was iconic. It was a hero of the early world-wide web, helping to kick-start the internet music age for a great many people like myself.

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I first discovered Winamp around 14 years ago, during my first year at university. Back then, you could run Winamp from any old folder without installing it, so everyone used to have a copy in their network profile. This was the early days… MP3s were still a rarity here in the UK, so you would listen mainly to CDs (Windows Media Player was a world of suck on Windows NT), or the 2-3 MP3s you had downloaded from Napster.

As time went on, MP3s became more and more common, and Winamp became the defacto music player for a lot of people. Imitators sprung-up elsewhere. It was small, customisable, and with plugins was able to do almost anything – like managing an MP3 Player, if you were the early-adopter who splashed out a few hundred for one of the early, pre-iPod devices. Ahem.

Then the iPod happened, and with it, iTunes. Once iTunes for Windows hit, that was the end of Winamp’s glory days. Owned by AOL, it sank into irrelevance. Full-blown music library management, with integrated store and device management, was the order of the day – all things Winamp was woeful at, even with plugins – relegating Winamp to a niche of nostalgia and a small number of users who couldn’t do with out some feature or other. Winamp 3 was a mess, Winamp 5.5 moved away from the minimal UI. There was even an Android version. It was terrible.

By that time, we had all moved to streaming music services. Why store gigabytes of music files on your computer, when someone else can do it for you, and high-speed access is increasingly common? The need for an application like Winamp was increasingly shrinking. At least Spotify has honoured your legacy by releasing Spotiamp.

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And so yesterday, Winamp ceased to be. The site is still there, and for now at least, it seems you can still download v5.666… but that will be turned off soon.

So long, Winamp. You really whipped that ass for as long as you could.

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Tonight I was hoping to watch Dredd, and The Amazing Spider-Man, as I’ve got a free Friday night, and for some reason, none of my other choices appealed to me… Explaining more would be a tangent, so lets continue with the story.

I was at the supermarket, and both films were on offer (DVD versions). I thought about picking them up, but thought “no, I’ll only watch them once, so having the DVD is needless clutter.” I figured I’d look on Netflix, or as a fall-back, rent on iTunes.

Neither film is available on Netflix, which sucks a bit, but never mind, let’s check iTunes… Neither film is available to rent1, so I’d have to buy… But the cost of Dredd is twice what the DVD would’ve cost, and The Amazing Spider-Man is almost an amazing three times the price! That to me seems like a bit of a rip-off.

So if I want to watch those movies at a wallet-friendly price I need to either a) go back to the store and buy 2 discs I don’t want, or b) pirate them. Neither option is appealing, so I’m unlikely to be watching these films like I’d hoped to.

It’s 2013, and we’re heading to a world where physical media is on its way out. So why is digital still so bleedin’ frustrating?

  1. as an aside, finding films to rent through the iPad version of the iTunes Store really, really, sucks! ↩
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There’s been a few things going on this last week which I wanted to talk about, but it’s been a hassle finding the time. Excuses, excuses, yadda yadda. Just shut up and get on with it…

I was all set to record this entry as my first podcast, but no, I went and broke my new headset mic as I was getting setup. A podcast is something I’ve wanted to record for a while, but I’ve never got round to it. I’m trying to, so keep your eye out.

Speaking of keeping an eye out, I registered gochrisgo.net in the last few days. Watch it… like a hawk as it were.

Back to Podcasts, I’ve been subscribing to a lot more recently. I used to find them quite dull and boring. Generally I still do. I’m not really a fan of the talk-radio style podcasts which only cover one topic. Michael over at Binary Bonsai is doing a nice job with his podcasts, though I will say I have preferred his two shorter episodes over the other, near hour-long episodes he has done. I’m also digging Jon Hicks approach to podcasting. This is similar to something I had in mind for my podcasts. In mine, I was going to ramble for a bit then play a track by a local band, or other track I felt worthy of sharing.

One last bit on the podcasting subject – for some reason, my iMac G5 goes all to hell when trying to add music from iTunes to a podcast in Garageband 3. It just hangs the whole machine. My iBook has no problems at all (albeit it’s slower). It’s been a little frustrating, as I really didn’t want to install something like Garageband on my “work” machine.

So stepping away from podcasts, what else has been going on? The biggie at work has been moving from internally managed web servers to fully-managed, dedicated hosting run by a third party. As part of the exercise, I had to write a proposal putting Apache on Linux up against IIS and Windows Server 2003. For years I’ve been hinting we should move to Apache, but when it came to writing this proposal, I had a tough time justifying such a move. In the end, Apache lost out on business reasons; the cost of switching now would be too high, mostly for time spent redeveloping existing web sites. However, PHP and MySQL are being installed so we can run Mint for stat-tracking.

What else..? I finally got round to buying Battlestar Galactica DVDs (season 1 and the mini-series). Not had a chance to watch them yet, even though I’ve watched the latter-half of season 2. Maybe this weekend. My Firefly soundtrack arrived today, I’m listening to it now. It’s very good, very relaxing. Other things I’ve been listening to a bit recently include Yellowcard’s Lights and Sounds (sounds a bit like early Feeder) and Hell Is For Heroes’ Neon Handshake (which is not new, but I only came across it recently… shame on me).

The CSS Reboot is drawing ever closer and while I’m not quite on schedule, I should be ready in time. Certainly for part one of the Master Plan. Phase One is very nearly complete; I have a bit of copy I need to write and a few design details to nail down before I can start pulling it together. Phase Two is a little more complex and might not be ready for May 1st although I will endeavour.

Speaking of redesigns, I like the refreshed Simplebits and Scrivs’ improved Whitespace. Whitespace in particular is quite good, with the combination of “full” entries and smaller “asides”. I think I prefer this to the usual mixing the two together (usually making the asides slightly less noticeable).

What else..? well there’s a couple of other things (Windows Mobile Phones and no Apple birthday surprises spring to mind…), but I think I’ve rambled for long enough for now and it’s late.

If I’ve touched on anything you’d like to comment on in this whistle-stop tour through the last week, please feel free to. I enjoy getting feedback and wish more readers would leave their thoughts!

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Something I like to do for each of my Macs, is keep a backed-up folder containing all the “essential” apps for both machines (along with all registration codes for easy reinstallation). I was updating my iBook copy this evening and thought I’d share. Some of these are generic apps that I’d use on either machine, while others are iBook specific.

Side-note – My iBook is pretty exclusively a web development machine.

Textmate. Textmate describes itself as “the missing editor for OS X”. I’m not sure what that’s meant to mean but hey, I’ll take their word for it! Textmate was the first Mac App I ever bought and is by far the best file editor I have ever used. Textmate handles just about any text file format you can throw at it, and above all else, lets you work without getting in your way. Seriously worth trying.

Ecto. Ecto is the best blogging client in the world. Especially on the Mac. I used to be a fan of MarsEdit (I own licenses for both), but Ecto won out in the end for its wider range of features. If you’re in any way serious about this blogging malarkey, I’d recommend you give it a try. Even the Windows version is recommended (although, naturally, it’s nowhere near as good as the Mac edition!)

Transmit. If Textmate was the first Mac App I paid for, then Panic Software’s Transmit was the second. It’s a S/FTP client with more features than you’re ever likely to need, but wrapped in a highly polished and intuitive interface. Transmit makes working with files on remote servers as effortless as working with local files in Finder. The synchronisation features alone are worth the price of the license.

Coconut Battery. More of a useful widget than an application, Coconut Battery can tell you near enough anything you need to know about the status and health of your battery. Ideal for checking if you want to know if you’ll be needing to buy a replacement any time soon.

Colloquy. Sometimes, the best – or only – way to get help on open-source applications/scripts, etc, is to jump into an IRC room. Colloquy is the best OS X IRC client I’ve found. As a rule, I don’t like chat or IM applications (they tend to be little more than a distraction), but Colloquy has helped me get access to the right answers on more than one occasion.

That’s really it for my iBook’s list of essential apps; I try to keep laptops “light”, hence the short list. My iMac list is probably huge in comparison. Besides, my other needs are either met by the apps bundled with OS X – Safari for web browsing, Terminal.app for command-line activity (remote sessions, etc.), iTunes and what-not, or by web applications –PHPMyAdmin for MySQL administration, Roundcube for accessing my IMAP email anywhere. Are there any applications you can’t live without on your Apple laptop? Please share!