I've been following the development on Music browsers on this group for some time, and have even added my own browser to the mix before. I'm really curious about user's opinions of browsing interfaces.
APE easily has one of the simplest interfaces, which I think is key for music. However, how important is the interface to everyone? When using a true CD Jukebox, you typically punch in a number and listen. There was no need for a TV, keyboard, mouse, etc. I wanted the same thing for my MP3 browser, but with the added benefit of being able to use the most common browse methods. Artist/Album/Genre, and directory for special cases.
Anyways, I wrote my app to have no interface at all really. It has an ugly one, but you don't need it to browse music, the TV can be off entirely. That's because it used voice synthesis to read the info to you. It uses only 8 buttons on a remote, and I use it with WinAMP for when I do use the TV and want some wacky visualization. However, when I announced it to the community, it was basically ignored. I think because it had an ugly interface.
So my curiousity question is this? How important is it to have album covers, lyrics, etc. on your screen when browsing/listening to music? For me, it's meaningless... I'm "listening", but I'm obviously a minority.
Of course, I'd love to see my browse method integrated into something like APE so that I could have the best of both worlds. I'd like to know other people's opinions too though.
Keep up the good work on APE by the way, I don't ever think there'll be one catch all music browser and there's room for them all.
Greg