Muzik || Made by cocotutch || $.99 Most of us get tired of the same old boring Music player on our iDevices. It has visually stayed the same. Once in a while there would be a few little tweaks here and there, but never any big graphical improvements or changes. Muzik is an application that can be used as a substitute for the Music application on your iDevice. It has most of the features that the native Music application has, and even has it's own little features. Note: This is my first review of an App Store application. I did have more photos for stars and for the Video player of Muzik, but I can't fit more than 10 images in my post. You can see the full review on my tumblr, here. GUI When I first opened Muzik the menu background is black, and looks as if my iDevice is a Zune music player now. There are a few options you can choose. You can either choose Music, Videos, Podcasts, Audiobooks, or Settings. A great UI feature of the device is the album art that is displayed to the left of the Album and Artists' information just like the native Music application. Also the white text on the black background is great contrast, and really makes the white, large font look beautiful, and easy to read. When you start playing a song in the application, Muzik, will download an image of the artist that is currently playing and set it as the background of the Menu and the Now Playing screen. This is an awesome feature of Muzik, and really made me fall in love with the application. This really is a great graphic feature of Muzik, and really is beautiful to see your favorite artist in the background of your Menu and Now Playing Screen. If you're on the Main Menu, and swipe to the left, there will be a little Now Playing are that will show the song you are currently listening to. With the new update that was just released there are a few features added to this screen. You can now shuffle and repeat straight from this screen. You can also tap the album art, and it will bring you to the Music controller of the application. The Music Controller for Muzik is beautiful. Again the artist picture is set as the background, the album art is shown, repeat and shuffle are also shown. To change the track you are listening to, you can simply swipe left on the album art to go back a song, or swipe to the right to go forward a song. There are also a lot of features on this screen hidden to make sure that there is not too much going on on the screen. This is a great feature because if there were too many buttons I feel that it would ruin the UI, and make it seemed too cluttered. If you tap the album art, it will bring up more controls that are hidden. Here you can change tracks and change the volume. On the top right it tells you exact volume in which your music is playing. I think it would have been better if the native headphones volume notifier was somehow hidden, but I'm assuming Apple didn't allow him to remove that. GUI: 5 out of 5 Features When you first open the Music section of the application you will see that it is very close to the native Music application, but with a much better UI in my opinion. It is very quick and easy to change the way you want your music library organized. All you have to do is swipe on the top where it says Albums, Songs, Artists, etc., and it will reorganize your music based on the category chosen. Muzik also has it's own little features! You can tweet the song you're listening to to your followers on Twitter, activate a few gestures, and reload the artist image if something went wrong, but I never had to reload the artist image. A new feature added in the update of Muzik, added letter tiles organizing your music in alphabetical order. To activate this feature to quickly jump from letter to letter, simply tap on a tile, and this will appear, giving you the ability to quickly jump to any letter. I was very excited when I first heard on Twitter that this was going to be implemented. This makes it a lot easier to browse through my huge music library. I think that this feature is close to perfect. There is only one thing I don't like about it, and that it organized my smart playlists in alphabetical order, and not in the order they were intended to be in. An example is my Recently Played songs were not organized by the time they were played, but instead it was organized alphabetically. You can change the color of the tiles by going to Settings in the Main Menu. There are many choices to choose from! Features: 5 out of 5 Audio Quality The audio quality is great. It sounds exactly the same as the native music application. Audio Quality: 5 out of 5 Reuse Value I use this application a lot more than I use the native application now. With the new addition of jumping from letter to letter added with the new update Muzik is very usable, and replaces the native Music application 100% for me. Reuse Value: 5 out of 5 Value for Money In conclusion, Muzik gave me exactly what I wanted. A new music application with a much better UI than the original. Sure it has it's flaws, but they are minor to me, and my every day use of Muzik. If you're looking for a sexy looking music player for your iDevice, Muzik is the application for you! Value for Money: 5 out of 5
It definitely has it's bugs (and downfalls compared to the stock music player...), but definitely a great buy for people who like having a good UI for their music.
