SizzlingKeys 3.3.1 is darn near perfect. It doesn't cram in all the features that other iTunes managers do (and don't believe for a moment it doesn't have plenty!) but that's part of what makes it great. Its Floater is the prettiest, most elegant, most reliable, responsive and CPU-friendly one of them all.

The ease in which you can set nearly all the useful keystrokes most users ever need to control iTunes (and more!) and stay productive in their primary tasks is a tribute to the developer's sense of what makes for a good Mac product. The newer features, such as Select Playlist and Find Song were welcome surprises to a longtime user; I don't know how long they were hiding in there while I have been using my own clunky AppleScripts with Growl an GeekTool to do the same.

Perhaps to the developer's discredit, is that he gives away for free far more than he should. The result, I would guess, is thousands of super-satisfied users who never cough up the measly five bucks for this gem of a program, and perhaps keeps the developer from adding more features, some of them desperately overdue, such as support for half-star ratings.

The developer might argue that one can get free or paid support for at least assigning half-stars from a plethora of other sources, but that the Floater still doesn't display them is baffling to me; we've had them available in iTunes (via hack only since iTunes 8?) for more than a couple of years now. iTunes has always supported numerical rating values (0-100), and it's time for SK to catch up.

I'd also like to see support for display of Lyrics, and support to display more song tags, such as Composer (for classical and Jazz listening), Year, Genre (and a hot key to correct on the fly), BPM, Duration, Time Elapsed/Remaining, Comments, and more for the Floater.

It would also be nice if you could toggle the Floater size (and position) and Album Artwork display on the fly, as well.

But don't let these feature requests make you think that there isn't plenty of power already in SK. If you haven't already downloaded and started using it for free, you're missing out on the party for no good reason.

I have no use for the few features Yellow Mug reserves for its SK Pro users. But anyone who makes use of more than just the basic play/pause/next/etc. controls, especially if you use the Floater or the ratings, and doesn't kick out the fiver YM asks for to unlock the six out of more than thirty available controls, should be ashamed of themselves.

I am ashamed of myself, honestly; I haven't purchased a license in a few years, and I just got around to ordering a Family Pack (only because it gave a couple more bucks to Yellow Mug), for the ridiculously low price of $6.95 for five seats; and I plan to buy another family pack for home when I return. I use it on more than one machine, and I probably should buy a Pro license for at least my two primary machines, that's for sure, in spite of the fact I don't and won't use the Pro features.

Frankly, I wouldn't mind at all paying an annual subscription fee to make sure it at least stays functional and bug free as Mac OS X evolves, and I would gladly pay more if it keeps giving me new and useful tools.

I'd like to give SK 3.3.1 five stars, but as much as I rely on it, I have to penalize its own lack of support for the same feature by at least a half star. So, like SK, even though I am granting 4.5 stars, this review will only display 4.

Frederico 2009.06.24