Comment by pxc

Amarok was way better than iTunes in that era. Massively better UI, separation of playback queue from collection browsing, plugin ecosystem, better metadata fetching including lyrics support... And its dynamic playlists were way more capable too.

I had an iPod in those days and Apple's firmware updates that periodically broke third-party sync (while bringing no improvements) is the reason that to this day I've never bought Apple hardware for myself from Apple since that time. Used hardware only.

Every time I had to use iTunes was regrettable. The app was an insanely massive download for the time. It tried to install fucking Safari on Windows for no reason. The UI was somehow simultaneously a sprawling mess and feature-deprived.

Maybe there was a brief period where iTunes was genuinely an interesting app, but even by the mid-aughts, it had been totally surpassed by a number of open-source music players.

But Amarok at that time was only available on Linux. I assume most iTunes fans of the time never got to try it.