More recent releases of Gnome and Rhythmbox incorporate a hip notification bubble for song changes. It’s subtle, informative, and looks good too (the shape, colours, and font sizing is great). The whole notification applet feature has become a stable mainstay for Gnome applications.

I’m quite impressed at how Rhythmbox has matured. I’ve been using iTunes for some time now, and was initially impressed at how well it was polished compared to Rhythmbox. Comparing the two side-by-side now, Rhythmbox has gained over iTunes: it has all of the useful features with a simpler interface, and no commercial tie-ins.

The main interface is similar to iTunes with a standard last/next/play toolbar, an artist/album filter, a song list (with ratings and a song source list). The filtering is instant, and playback is crisp (especially with ogg, which I don’t think iTunes supports). As with iTunes, Rythmbox has a party mode, and rule-based playlists.

One of the most exciting things about tools like Rhythmbox is its rate of improvement. In the time that I’ve used iTunes, there have been a handful of bugs that have not been addressed, like severe redraw issues on Windows, CPU usage problems, and an intrusive installer (removing iTunes is difficult). In the same time, Rhythmbox has released several patches and three major releases.

I realize that Windows is not the primary platform for iTunes, and yet it’s one of the best players available. The remaining players on Windows are either encumbered with advertising, DRM, and bling, or they’re hackish and baroque. I’m lucky to have great free tools like Rythmbox (and Gnome) available to me.