About six months I joined the iPod revolution, something that I’d never thought I’d do because I’m usually technologically and fashionably retarded when it comes to trends and the thought of a device which has formed a hybrid of these two personality deficiencies was more than I could handle. Surprisingly though, things seemed to work out pretty well apart from one thing – iTunes.
Whereas I’ve fallen quite deeply for my iPod itself, iTunes, on Windows at least, is just about the worst piece of software ever written. It’s slow, doesn’t let you do simple tasks like export the music that you’ve paid for, and basically just fucks about too much by trying to be cutting-edge. Which is why I decided to divorce myself from it.
It took me a lot of strength to walk away, but once I did I never looked back. Following are the three essential pieces of software that you need in order to liberate your iPod from the box that Apple has tried to keep it in, and enjoy it as you’d like to imagine being able to from all those fancy commercials on the TV…
1. iTunes Exporter
-This is a simple piece of software that allows you to export music files and playlists from your iTunes library so that you can play them on other MP3 devices or in Windows Media Player, etc. It’s pretty simple to use if you follow the onscreen instructions, just follow the prompts, and remember to chose the ‘copy music’ option from the drop-down menu in the bottom right of the final screen. Once you’ve retreived your music you can get rid of iTunes once and for all. If you need it for the iTunes store you should use iTunes Exporter to reclaim the songs once you’ve downloaded them.
Download Here (file size 116kb). More Detailed Instructions on how to use Here.
2. Switch
- Switch is an awesome and totally free convertor of music files. It uses a pretty fast codec to convert just about any file into MP3 format, including any files that you’ve ripped from CD on your Windows Media Player, OGG and a load of others.
Download Here (file size 389kb).
3. Sharepod
- Sharepod is an alternative to iTunes which allows you to do everything that iTunes does (apart from use the iTunes store). Most importantly, it allows you to retrieve files from an iPod and store them on your hard drive or put them on another iPod. Definitely worth getting and you can say good bye to all the iTunes hassle once and for all. The program runs from your iPod itself allowing you to use it on any computer.
Download Here (file size 591kb).
Easy.
