Short of writing your own scripts to control mplayer, mpd+ncmpc is the most simple and most reliable (most difficult to crash) open source UNIX-friendly music player solution I've ever used. And over the years I've systematically tried every player I could find inside the package/ports repositories and outside of them.
These days I just use scripts and mplayer. But for a ready-made solution, MPD fills the "simple and reliable" niche completely, in my opinion. On those two criteria it is without parallel.
On Windows, foobar2000 was great but the source was never available.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, including the CNET author. As for myself, the only friction I see in sharing is Facebook itself. Beyond collecting a useful list of email addresses of people I know, they are not providing a service that I need, they are just a man in the middle, intercepting everything they can.
Given the ability to forgo having to let users opt-in (what they see as "friction"), what would Facebook do? I think it's obvious. In that regard they are no different than any spammer.
In my opinion, Facebook apps offer much more to Facebook (as they acquire an often elusive opt-in) than they do to the user. The user associates the use of the app with their friend rather than Facebook and the app developer. In this way Facebook gains the user's trust.
It's not much different than dangerous email attachments. Same old trick. Give it any name you want.
These days I just use scripts and mplayer. But for a ready-made solution, MPD fills the "simple and reliable" niche completely, in my opinion. On those two criteria it is without parallel.
On Windows, foobar2000 was great but the source was never available.