too many words by laura lemay

audion

The True Story of Audion

This article went around the blogs a few weeks ago, so I’m behind the curve here. Audion was a Mac MP3 player that was around for a long time and made a respectable living for its creators, the small software shop Panic. And then iTunes came out, iTunes was free, and its difficult to compete with that. Panic has retired and discontinued support for Audion and is now offering its final version for free while the developers go off to writing bigger and better things.

What this article is all about is how Audion got developed, and more interestingly, how Apple ended up buying their main competitor and turning it into iTunes. Its a really interesting look into how a small software company in the mac world works and also a glimpse into what happens when you try to compete with Steve Jobs (as in: don’t). The article is well-written, funny, with lots of little pop-up asides and links to other tangential information. Its a good read. Thanks to Panic for sharing this.