Winamp for Mac. The legendary player has been ported to Mac. Improvements in the new version

Winamp is a universal free player that has extensive functionality. It allows you to play your favorite music tracks and watch videos in various formats. And here Cyclone-Soft users can download Winamp for free in Russian for Windows 7/8/10, Mac OS X and Android. What files will this software work with?

Their number is quite large, so a large-scale list can be included here: MOD, MP4, AAC, WMA, XM, MIDI, WAV, RMI, XM, SND, NSV, FLAC, IT, ASF, MIZ, VOC, AIFF, NSA, AVI, M2V, FLV, S3M, CDA, NCA, WMV, SMF.

If we talk about playlists, then PLS, M3U, B4S, WPL and ASX he will also master it. And this is far from a complete series.

Winamp development

Having appeared on the market in 1997, Winamp boldly declared itself in the period from 2005 to 2013. The easily customizable player developed by NullSoft, which plays compressed but high-quality mp3 music, has won the hearts of many music fans. Hundreds of settings, ease of use and covers for every taste are the reasons why more than 200 million people still download it to their gadgets. Moreover, users could always download the player by choosing the settings for themselves. For example, the Russian version allowed many people to quickly master the new software.

System requirements

For computer

For mobile devices

Winamp features

Playback

Control

Saving and processing information

Appearance and additional features

Benefits of Winamp for Smartphones

Improvements in the new version

Winamp for Windows

The Winamp media player, known to every Windows user, has begun its expansion on Mac OS X and is already available as a beta version. Having taken the current version of the application apart, we will all try to figure out what good this product can offer to Mac users who are not short of such applications and whether this application will take root on the Mac.

To be honest, given the not-so-good state of affairs of the popular player on the Windows platform, the last thing we expected was to see it in the version for Mac OS X. Numerous switcher users literally bombarded the developer company Nullsoft with questions about when a version of the player would finally appear for Mac OS X, but the creators kept refusing and did not provide any specific information. But recently its first beta was released on Mac.

The developers honestly warn that this is just a beta version, so you shouldn’t expect any miracles, and at the same time the functionality of the Windows version.

When we first launch the application, we are prompted to import the contents of the iTunes library or the default Mac OS X music folder. You can import immediately, or by clicking on Skip Import, refuse to import, because this operation can be carried out at any other time using the program menu item File->Add to Library or by specifying the appropriate folder in the application settings.

In practice, we Failed to use import option in welcome window, so we added audio tracks through the corresponding program menu option. Immediately after importing the audio tracks, we will finally be shown the working interface of the application. It cannot be accused of being foreign or, conversely, being too pretentious; no, the interface is quite simple and neat, the design colors are dominated by dark tones, and the user has no alternative and will not be able to change the dark design to a lighter one. One of the important advantages of Winamp for Windows was the support for skins (themes), which users themselves could create using appropriate applications, here There is no skin support at all.

The application window consists of two non-scalable parts, a control panel containing navigation buttons, volume changes, an information screen and a search tool, as well as an information toolbar, which displays information about the number of tracks in the playlist.

The left side is designed to display a list of categories and playlists. In it we see three sections: Library, Playlists and Devices.

• Library. Judging by the structure of the section, it is intended to display categories of the Winamp library. In fact, there is only one category - Music, into which all music tracks are placed, regardless of what sources they were imported from.
• Playlists. Playlists section. The “” button is responsible for creating a playlist. + ", located to the right of the section name. The playlists are very ordinary; Winamp apparently does not know about the existence of smart playlists. Due to the lack of support for drag and drop, adding tracks to the playlist will not be the most convenient way - through the context menu, called up by right-clicking on the selected track.
• Devices. It is not for nothing that the full name of the current version of the application sounds like Winamp for Mac Sync Beta. The program allows you to synchronize with Android gadgets with Winamp installed on them. In the Devices section, apparently, the very devices with which synchronization is carried out will be displayed.

The toolbar is standard enough to warrant special attention. We can only mention that the information board displays the playing time of the track being played, as well as its title and artist name. Worth special attention, perhaps, are search tools that allow you to search for tracks based on the content of their metadata, and the search results are displayed instantly, as you compose the search query, and the search query can be written in both Latin and Cyrillic alphabet.

The right side of the program window displays a list of tracks from the selected playlist. Displayed: the name of the track and the album to which it belongs, the name of the artist, genre, year and time of play. Clicking on the header of any of the named columns allows you to sort by the selected parameter.

Despite the lack of Russian localization, the player correctly perceives the Cyrillic alphabet in ID3 tags and does not experience any problems when it is displayed in the track list or on the information screen.

Tracks are played only in sequential order; there is no shuffle, just like an equalizer. Despite the presence of shortcuts that allow you to switch tracks or control playback volume without using a mouse, their use is ONLY possible in the active application window, which is more than strange and inconvenient.

The Winamp settings menu is the height of minimalism and laconicism, having only one tab that allows you to designate the source folder from which the player will play music and track changes in it.

In addition to the lack of support for skins, Winamp for Mac does not have another significant component of the “Windows” Winamp - plugin support, with the help of which the application could be made to play anything, from music in all kinds of formats to video files and Internet radio.

The undoubted advantage of Winamp on the Windows platform was its fairly low consumption of system resources compared to other similar applications, for example iTunes for Windows, and the difference in values ​​was quite noticeable. What do we see in Mac OS X? Bulky iTunes with a lot of functions and capabilities takes away from RAM 61 MB RAM and uses 3% of the processor power with 15 threads for its work.

The beta version of Winamp, with its meager functionality, takes up only 0.5% of the processor power of 8 threads, but consumes almost memory 44 MB, which is quite a lot for the current state of the beta version, especially in comparison with iTunes data. All this may indicate that the application code is still quite crude and requires serious optimization.

Listing everything that is present in the Windows version of the player and missing in the Mac version would probably take quite a lot of time. It’s easier to say that at the moment Winamp for Mac can only do one thing - play music from a playlist sequentially and synchronize with Android devices. Not enough to compete not only with iTunes, but with any other more or less serious audio player. Undoubtedly, if the developers have enough strength and desire to develop this application, then over time it will acquire all the necessary functions and take over many of the features of the Windows version that users love so much. But that will happen later... if at all.

The small and convenient media player was for many years the most coveted application for switchers, who were frightened by reviews of the clumsy work of iTunes as the main file player on the system. Developers Nullsoft(now AOL) all this time delayed the release of Winamp for Macs, and the “tuna”, in turn, acquired functions and was actively polished by developers from Apple. The other day, the first working beta version of the player finally appeared, which can be downloaded for free from the official website. Strange appearance, scant functionality and lack of favorite skins, support for additional file formats and Internet broadcasting. This is a short description for those who don't want to read the whole review.

After the first launch, Winamp will prompt you upload a media library into it in two ways: Import your tracks from iTunes and simply specify the folder with them in the system. You can check a box next to each of these items and the program itself will pull the files added to the folder into playlists - this is convenient.

This could be the end of the review. The songs have been successfully imported, you can click on the “Play” button and enjoy the compositions of your favorite artists. The program can't do anything else. From additional functions Creation of additional playlists and synchronization with Android gadgets with Winamp installed on them are available. Of course, not a word about iOS devices.

Externally, Winamp for Mac OS X looks a lot like iTunes. The side block with the media library, the right menu with track names, the playback control block, the volume lever, the display with the names of the song being played and the playback time - everything is in the same places as in the Apple media combine. Upsetting inability to change black skin applications, dark colors quickly tire the eyes.

Basic Winamp Controls

It also raises questions player control. When working with iTunes, are you used to switching songs using the function keys on your keyboard, even when the application is minimized? Forget about this with Winamp - to change the composition, open the application again and press the corresponding arrow at the top of the menu or the Command+right/left arrow combination. It would be convenient if the developers added an add-on to the status bar to control playback.

One of the main advantages of Winamp over iTunes on Windows was the economical use of RAM resources. Nullsoft's brainchild "ate" significantly less RAM compared to the gluttonous Apple product. On Mac OS X the difference is almost unnoticeable (screenshot above) - 41MB for iTunes vs 31MB for Winamp. This indicates poor optimization of the application for the new system.

After several days of using the new player, I still haven’t found any useful innovations or tasks that are easier for me to do on Winamp. It is not currently suitable as a main audio player (there is no support for video files), but in the next updates developers can update their program and make it no less functional than for Windows. Whether it will end up in the Mac App Store after leaving beta is also a big question, the answer to which only censors from Cupertino know.