“Speedbird eight-six-zero-heavy, runway one-right: Cleared. For. Takeoff.”

12/02/2008

At 9:15 PST this morning, Songbird 1.0 executed a beautiful takeoff.
Being a die-hard Linux user, I didn’t think anything would pull me away from my PDP8-era ncurses-based music player.
But the difficult (often behind-the-scenes) work done since in the 0.7¹ timeframe and leading up to the 1.0 release transformed the Bird into an imminently capable player, even for my admittedly somewhat-unorthodox uses².
To boot, I’ve actually “lived the marketing materials” and found a bunch of music that I can’t get out of my head³ that I otherwise would have missed. Coming from that ncurses-based player, it’s quite a paradigm shift, and with extensions like mashTape, I don’t think I’ll be able to go back (even if they did stuff links into that old ncurses-based player

***
This is the first time in my career that I’ve shipped a “one-dot-oh” product.
I was expecting it to be a bit more hectic than it turned out to be, but… I’d like to think “a boring, predictable release” translates to “I’m doing my job well.” Then again, I’m also working with a great team, who make large parts of my job pretty easy (and enjoyable, to boot).
I’m really pleased by the way my first 1-dot-oh turned out.
And while there’s lots of work to do, lots of features to add, and, sure, probably a couple of bugs to fix, Songbird is a pretty awesome application, one all of us should be proud to have among Mozilla’s ranks, showcasing the power of the platform’s technology.
You can grab your copy at getsongbird.com.
The real question now: is 10 am too early for scotch?⁶
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¹ Seems so long ago…
² Lots of FLAC content and a lot of streaming…
³ … some of it somewhat… embarrassing to actually admit I like…^4
4 <cough>Rihanna’s Don’t Stop the Music</cough>^5
5 If you had been reading this blog post in Songbird, you could have clicked on that link and gotten that song stuck in your head too!
⁶ Alright, alright, maybe I’ll wait until lunch…