What a Difference a UI Designer Makes

I use an audio editing program called Audacity for various audio editing tasks. Most recently I used it to edit a sound file I created from a screen-cast I made using Camtasia Studio. I needed to be able to listen to a sound bite offline via my iPod.

I created the file but when I went to export and save the mp3 file, I was confronted with this:



I added a "Title" and an "Artist", but was overwhelmed when I had to decide a genre. I did eventually find "Vocal" (it was an interview from the web that I saved to listen to later). I had to scroll three times and read each and every genre name. Shouldn't this be in alphabetical order?

Once the file was complete I imported it into iTunes to add it to my iPod. When I checked the iTunes information I saw this:



All the genres in alphabetical order!

Should I really be this critical? Should I really compare and open source software to a software created by a multi-million dollar company? Well...yes. As far as any user is concerned, both software products are "free" - one can use them without having to pay for them. (Although a donation to the open source developers is accepted. If you use an open source software, make a donation in time or money. I do.)

If open source software developers want their software to be taken seriously they need to pay attention to the details. Looking for the genre in Audacity is hard; looking for a genre in iTunes is easy.