PwnPlayer: an (unauthorized) alternative to iPhone’s music player

Posted by james on October 25th, 2008 at 09:16pm Comments

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Although the iPhone comes with a fully functional music player, it’s nice to know that there are some alternatives to it being created… Especially if they promise more features than the default music player.

One of them is PwnPlayer, which according to its developer is “a player app that will aim to be a full replacement for your current default music app.” A video demonstration is below.

According to its creator, Eric Castro, key features of PwnPlayer for iPhone include:

- For Linux, iSlsk users and iTunes haters: File system playback. PwnPlayer reads any folder inside your iPhone/iPod file system and will play mp3s the same way MobileMusicPlayer does, with playlist, artwork and add/remove/tag edit support. Simply drag and drop your mp3 files using your favorite file browsing app such as WinSCP, CureFTP, CyberDuck or iPhoneBrowser… Or download them using iSlsk or any other music download app!
- Music Library compatibility: if you still want to keep using iTunes *vomit*, PwnPlayer is fully compatible with the internal music library
- Search: type in the first letters of the song/artist/album/file you are looking for, tap search and it will appear right there for you.. works both with music library and file system songs.
- Lock-Screen gesture controls: this is one of my favorites. You can control your PwnPlayer by swiping your finger on the lock screen, for easy handling from your pocket.. without having to unlock the device. If you haven’t seen it already in the video above, here’s a screenshot:
- CoverFlow: mimcs almost the same coverflow appearance seen in MobileMusicPlayer. It works only with iTunes library for now, but in the future will also support file system mp3s.
- Background mode: PwnPlayer is for jailbroken devices, so you don’t have to worry about it not being able to run in background. Screw Apple SDK ridiculous rules!
- SpringBoard integration: PwnPlayer automatically integrates with SpringBoard. You will see the current playing song info in your lock screen, and you’ll be able to use the home double-tap shortcut to control music playback when you are in another app while PwnPlayer is running on background.
- Playlist managing: Create, edit, and remove playlists on the fly easily.

All the above will be available on its first release. Future updates will include:

- Plug-ins: Yes, if the aforementioned wasn’t enough, you will still be able to add more and more features to PwnPlayer thru it’s plug in system. Or even make your own plugins and distribute them! support for more formats, Lyrics viewer, a Last.FM scrobbler, streaming.. imagine what could be done, and that you will never see on default MobileMusicPlayer.
- Video: Currently PwnPlayer does not support video playback, but it’s one of its top priorities for future updates.
- Support for genius playlists?: I still don’t know how difficult will be to support this new feature introduced in 2.1 firmware, but yes, it might be available in future updates as well.
- Move music files between file system and music library back and forth?: well, I already said this is not available now because the new iTunesDB security checksums have not been cracked yet.. but if someday they finnally get fully reverse engineered, this will be completely possible.

You can download the current version of PwnPlayer, beta 5, through Cydia (if you have a jailbreaked iPhone).

Related posts:

1. vlc4iphone: VLC media player for iPhone
2. Dance Mixer iPhone app allows you to make your own music videos
3. Monsoon’s HAVA player will allow to watch and control home TV from the iPhone
4. Dot.Tunes iPhone music, video streaming program
5. Teclast T50 Portable Media Player with Capacitive Touch-Screen.

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