I’ve had Sony hardware for years.  Various flavours of MiniDisc came and went – one of them got stolen, another got smashed – and now I have a couple of Network Walkmans sitting about the place.

I don’t use them as much as I should do.  Why?  Sony’s platform-itis.  Whether it’s MiniDisc, ATRAC3 or UMD, they’re determined to lock people into their own software platforms as far as possible.  Apple do this all the time of course, and although I don’t like them either, I will concede that iTunes does for the most part actually work.

Sony’s SonicStage/Sony Connect/OpenMG Jukebox has always been rubbish.  Various grades thereof, but still rubbish.  OpenMG Jukebox used to crash arbitrarily on any MP3 that wasn’t crafted by flaxen-haired audio angels using anvils of the finest mythical diamonds, Sony Connect was slow and only in recent releases has the experience become anywhere near pleasant.

So it was with some rapture that I stumbled across JSymphonic tonight.  Aside from the usual open-source lack of visual polish, and some minor UI confusion (which reading the documentation fixed) it’s been plain sailing. If you’ve got some nice-looking but irritating-to-synchronize devices hanging around, then I heartily recommend using this to rediscover them – my Network Walkman is happily charging away for the first time this year.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 at 1:13 am and is filed under Interwang, Music, Software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.