I love the iPod. All my friends too. Stack it next to the iRiver, Creative and even the Sony music players and the Apple offering still stands out. I don’t know if it’s because of it’s zen-like simplicity or its straitforward intuitiveness. Whatever the reason, the iPod simply commands an armada of fans.
The accolade doesn’t extend to the bloatware that is known as iTunes. Steve Jobs prefers that you manage your tunes with the iTunes because it is his gateway to selling you millions of $1 tracks. But I’m not impressed. For one thing, when you attempt to upload music from different laptops -something many of us do- the content of the ipod is wiped out. Apparently, iTunes frowns upon polygamy. This can be very annoying when you’re visiting your friend and discover that he has the slickest sound track for your next rave party. You hook it up to his PC and iTunes sends an ominous message: All your songs will be erased if you continue.
You go home without the sound track.
Because of the vexing iTunes quirks, I started to explore alternatives to iPod managment. One good alternative is the Media Four Xplay 3. It’s rapid loading, takes little disc space and does what you tell it to do without demanding you reformat your precious iPod. You can view contents even within Windows Explorer because the player mounts as a hard disc. The protocols work for the iPhone and iTouch as well. Now the next time you visit your friends, you can share their music without blasting your playlist to smithereens.
There’s just a couple of downers. The software cots $30 wheras iTunes comes for free. You also lose much of the intuitive track management that the latter offers. Get over these, and you’ll love it however.
Is $30 still too much? I can recommend two free alternatives that do not offer the same level of functionality, but which still get the job done. One is Floola (floola.com) and the other is the famous WinAmp (winamp.com). Download them from their respective websites and experience liberation from itunes!
