We all love music, don’t we? But not that many people love their iTunes app, wouldn’t you agree? The app has become cluttered with every release as Apple continues to shove more features into it. This has resulted in many alternative solutions being offered, both to control and organize your music without fiddling with the iTunes interface. Accomplishing this with some sexy interfaces and nicely pushed pixels would be heaven for music lovers. Especially, controller apps like Ecoute have to have a stunning UI to stay competitive against the overwhelming functionality of iTunes and other competitors.
Simplify, an app designed and developed by Pixel Mates, is definitely a candidate in the race to the throne of simple and gorgeous apps to control and play your favorite tunes. One of the major reasons for this, in the case of most users, is that Ecoute lost a lot of its intrinsic appeal of simplicity for the sake of more functionality after it was updated to version 3. Basically, Simplify now is what Ecoute 1 was, but with a different outfit & featuring Spotify & Rdio integration. Simplify – as the name might already imply – keeps the functions and their presentation minimal and easy to use and love. The tracks iTunes or Spotify is playing are presented using a cool, glossy designed, vinyl-style cover art and you might just click forward and backwards or play/pause respectively to control iTunes’ most basic functions. The app also has customizable shortcuts and the ability to create your own desktop widgets Jackets using HTML, CSS & Javascript, so you can bend it to your liking. They offer three Jackets on the site, which can be downloaded here.
The formula of “Keep it simple, stupid!” executed very well. Simplify is available on the Mac App Store for just $4.99.