Winamp's woes: how the greatest MP3 player undid itself

15 years on, Winamp still lives—but mismanagement blunted its llama-whipping.

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[Boskone]

...nor were they as tightly and efficiently programmed as Winamp. Even today, the Mac version of the Winamp installer is only 4.2MB; by comparison, the iTunes Mac installer comes in at a whopping 170MB.

Did you really just compare Winamp to iTunes?

I won't deny that Winamp is a preformant application, but you're comparing apples to oranges. Remember that in addition to (most) of the features of Winamp (I don't believe that iTunes is skinnable....at all....), iTunes also has to manage movie and TV show libraries, ebooks, ringtones, and applications, provide an online store of each of these formats, syncronize with iPods, iPhones, iPads, and iTVs, provide network music streaming, syncronize contacts, calendars, email, and notes...

Uh, yea. When iTunes came out, it didn't do all that shit either.

If WinAMP development hadn't (been) stalled, they would have kept adding features, management, signed distribution deals, etc.

I paid for WinAMP back in the day, but WinAMP 3 was too friggin' huge. Been kinda jumping programs since.