iPlay

Back in the day, before hitting the “Play” button, you had to spend a lot of time going through CDs, cassettes or Vinyls, find the one that suits your mood and get the device ready. Nowadays it all takes a few seconds and mouse clicks, as well as a media player, amongst which you can also use iPlay as a simple and practical alternative.

Apple managed to set a trend for using its specific lower case prefix and is also what this application does. It's also because the interface is designed to resemble an Apple product, namely an iPod. However, a little time spent with it and you realize it's not even close to being as practical as an iPod.

The design is pretty simplistic, with a small display showing the title in a large font that scrolls from one side to the other so you can see the whole string, elapsed time, while all controls are designed to mimic their placement on an actual device.

File support is decent, with the possibility to play popular formats like OGG, WAV, AIF, RAW, MP3, AAC and WMA. Dragging a song over the main window has no effect and neither can you select a folder to play its entire content.

In fact, all the application can do is play a song in an interface that resembles an iPod, with several colors to choose from. However, there's no built-in menu for color selection and you need to run a different executable for each of the available ones.

You can only select one song, with the application sitting idly by once it's done delivering sound. There's no repeat button, playlist manager or even a simple volume slider to decrease the level of decibels passing through your ear drum.

To end with, iPlay doesn't share any of the qualities its real life corresponding device benefits from, neither in terms of visuals, let alone functionality. The idea, although not new, is neat, but the limited playback that requires you to load each song before playing it makes it lack the integrity it needs to be a proper music player.