TechnowledgeBase

Merry Christmas, Happy Birthday, Happy Valentines Day… Here’s your present: A brand new IPod. A bazillion songs in your pocket. All you need to do is plug it in and install the special iTunes software-

Special Software? Itunes? Can’t you just browse to your IPod like an external hard drive and drop the mp3’s on it? Go ahead…. try. I’ll wait right here. Back so soon? Miserable failure, you say? Confusing mess of cryptic directories, you say? Take this piece of proprietary plastic crap back to Best Buy, you say?

Well, let’s not be hasty….

The Problem:
You’ve got a sweet ipod mp3 player, but you hate iTunes with a fury that burns with the heat of a thousand suns. A shame there isn’t a way to use the first without being stuck with the second.

The Solution:
There is a way to use the first without being stuck with the second. Over the years since the Ipod first arrived, lots of people (…okay, a few) have carved out ways to access the Ipod’s music cache without cluttering their harddrive with the software abortion that is iTunes. Yes, contrary to what you may have heard, you CAN use other software to transfer songs to/from your sleek Apple MP3 player. You just haven’t heard of that software until now.

My favorite is Ephpod. It’s free.

Unlike iTunes, Ephpod a quick download and is very light on the resources. When you run it, you get a simple but elegant interface that allows you to drag/drop/import/export songs to your heart’s content. Create and modify playlists? Check. Import entire directories and create playlists automatically? Check. Edit mp3 metadata? Check. Normalize volume with one click? Check. The end result on your ipod is the same as if you’d used Itunes… only you didn’t.

Now, I will say that in my particular case, I DID install iTunes FIRST, but only so that I could update the firmware on my device. As far as I know, iTunes is still the only way to get that done. But after my Ipod was up to date, I uninstalled iTunes, installed Ephpod, and never looked back.

There are other iTunes alternatives besides Ephpod. If you already use WinAmp, Realplayer (why?), or Windows Media Player (WHY!?), you might investigate plugins to those particular pieces of bloatware that allow you to connect to your ipod. But beware of any software or plugins that 1) costs money or 2) costs money. However, if you’re like me and do most of your music listening on the go, all you really want is something to put mp3’s on your Ipod and keep them organized. Ephpod delivers. Oh, and did I mention that its free?

Popularity: 9% [?]

This entry was posted on Monday, June 4th, 2007 at 7:00 am and is filed under Software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.