Is there anyway to use an iPod without iTunes yet?

Chris1712 · 25 Dec 2006 at 22:31

Well i need a new mp3 player, 20gb just does not cut it anymore and the price of the 80gb ipod has really tempted me. Before now i hadnt considered them, hate having ot use itunes hate all the propriatary stuff, the sound quality and until now, the price.

So the big question is, is there a nice hacked firmware out there to let me drag and drop my music/videos on to the sucker, plug and play like every mp3 player should be!?

Any info greatly appreceiated, google is returning a bit too much info for me to get through so i thought i'd ask you guise!

glitch · 26 Dec 2006 at 12:46

From what I've seen, many people talk highly about this software: http://www.redchairsoftware.com/anapod/

However, I was once like you in my distaste for iTunes. Having bought an 80GB iPod recently I have to say iTunes has completely won me over and I couldn't think of a better way to organise my music and my 'pod. Sound quality would seem as good as other software I've tried (mind you, I'm using Apple Lossless) and for ease of use it can't be beaten. Not sure if other applications support gapless playback either - but they must do, mustn't they?

Ultimately it's horses for courses. I'd give iTunes a crack before splashing out on something else though.

Margaret · 26 Dec 2006 at 14:14

iTunes is far easier to manage the iPod with I don't see why get so annoyed by it. :rolleyes:

iPods aren't every MP3 player, they have folders all split up and coded into weird names (Folders are called F01, F02 ...etc and the song files are like XYCD.mp3 and stuff)

If you want the best app to manage your iPod, you're probably looking at iTunes.

So the big question is, is there a nice hacked firmware out there to let me drag and drop my music/videos on to the sucker, plug and play like every mp3 player should be!?

iTunes is drag and drop.

TheVoice · 26 Dec 2006 at 14:19

Winamp will also allow you to use iPods. The ml_ipod plugin makes that side of things even better, too.

Don't like iTunes myself so I've been using Winamp to do it for quite a while. Works beautifully.

Morfik · 26 Dec 2006 at 14:28

Personally I use Winamp + ml_ipod plugin. It works pretty great, is completely free, and you can use it to tranfer videos which many other iTunes replacements can't.

As I already use the Winamp Media Library to catalogue / play my music it was pretty easy just to install the plugin in and sync up what I wanted.

If you want a list of other alternatives, this isn't a bad place to start:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_iPod_Managers

Bear in mind though, that as the above poster has said due to the way the iPod uses a database to catalogue what's on the player not just simple folders, it'll never support true drag-and-drop. Several managers can "simulate" this but in the background they're updating the iPod database and putting files in the correct place. It's not the same as with other players.

Margaret · 26 Dec 2006 at 14:38

I did use Winamp for my iPod mini, but I find iTunes a lot easier for adding album art and of course Video/Photos. (When I got my Video Pod)

steveo · 26 Dec 2006 at 18:52

sorry to jump on your thread m8 but as its discussing itunes i thought i would ask, any way i can transfer music and videos to my ipod no prob but is there a way to put the files on there and when i come to put more or just put the new ones on??? the reason i ask is that every time i have tryed to put new music on or a couple of videos its done the whole lot not just the ones that are not on it and when i have just selected the new ones its just done that and taken the other items of it :confused:

lol for once i miss sonys connect and sonicstage

Zefan · 26 Dec 2006 at 19:10

Don't give in to the dark side Chris >_<!

Chris1712 · 26 Dec 2006 at 19:18

Zefan said:
Don't give in to the dark side Chris >_<!

Dont worry, ive kept myself true to archos and bought an 80gb 504 today

. Drag and drop, massive screen and loadsa video codecs. Sure its about the size of a brick but it fits in my pocket.......just.

Margaret · 26 Dec 2006 at 19:28

Chris1712 said:
Dont worry, ive kept myself true to archos and bought an 80gb 504 today . Drag and drop, massive screen and loadsa video codecs. Sure its about the size of a brick but it fits in my pocket.......just.

One of them things? yuck =/

Bout 60 quid more than a Video iPod 80 gig also lol.

Chris1712 · 26 Dec 2006 at 19:33

Jihad said:
One of them things? yuck =/

Bout 60 quid more than a Video iPod 80 gig also lol.

Thats weird cost me 8 quid less.

£225 in purple world, 233 for the 80gb ipod.

Morfik · 26 Dec 2006 at 22:10

Jihad said:
I did use Winamp for my iPod mini, but I find iTunes a lot easier for adding album art and of course Video/Photos. (When I got my Video Pod)

I actually found iTunes worse for artwork when I tried it. It doesn't recognise folder.jpg files stored inside the album folder which pretty much every other player (Winamp, Windows Media Player, Foobar etc.) does. Having to run a 3rd party program just to embed them all seems over the top when the other programs all cope fine.

Also my other gripe when I imported my music it seemed random which tags it read from mp3 files, some it would import Artist, Track etc properly and others it would just list the filename and not read any tags, requiring me to do a GetInfo on all these entries (and there were a lot) to properly add the tags. (I know there's a script that can automatically do this for all your files but again, it shouldn't be needed when Winamp, Windows Media Player, Songbird don't have this problem).

Margaret · 26 Dec 2006 at 22:58

Chris1712 said:
Thats weird cost me 8 quid less.

£225 in purple world, 233 for the 80gb ipod.

330 quid where I saw it today :eek:

I actually found iTunes worse for artwork when I tried it. It doesn't recognise folder.jpg files stored inside the album folder which pretty much every other player (Winamp, Windows Media Player, Foobar etc.) does. Having to run a 3rd party program just to embed them all seems over the top when the other programs all cope fine.

In iTunes, what I do is just drag the album art jpeg into the "Drag album art here" part of iTunes for each track, or you can highlight a bunch of tracks from the same album and put the album art in for one of them then it applys it to them all, the way I do my artwork anyhoo

steveo · 26 Dec 2006 at 23:04

Jihad said:
or you can highlight a bunch of tracks from the same album and put the album art in for one of them then it applys it to them all, the way I do my artwork anyhoo

stupid question but how do u high just one alubm coz it seems i can just highlight one track or all of them sorry this is my first day of using itunes lol been a sonicstage guy for past year and a bit

Margaret · 26 Dec 2006 at 23:06

steveo said:
stupid question but how do u high just one alubm coz it seems i can just highlight one track or all of them sorry this is my first day of using itunes lol been a sonicstage guy for past year and a bit

Click the tabs near the top which say "Album" "Artist" "Title" etc etc, click the Album tab once and it will sort them by Album.

Then when you see the tracks from the album you wanna highlight, hold shift and click on the start of the album then to where it ends and it will highlight every file until it reaches the end of the album.

Hope that makes sense :X

steveo · 26 Dec 2006 at 23:10

Jihad said:
Click the tabs near the top which say "Album" "Artist" "Title" etc etc, click the Album tab once and it will sort them by Album.

Then when you see the tracks from the album you wanna highlight, hold shift and click on the start of the album then to where it ends and it will highlight every file until it reaches the end of the album.

Hope that makes sense :X

lol stupid me i have been trying to do it like u do in say windows explorer or my computer where u just right click and drag, will try it that way cheers for that

Alexrose1uk · 27 Dec 2006 at 00:18

Hmmm, didnt realise Winamp had an Ipod tool addon now. Thanks, will keep an eye on this, as I just got my mum an Ipod Nano, and will probably have to load music on it, and I HATE Itunes with a loathing, I've NEVER liked it.

Tute · 27 Dec 2006 at 01:01

Finally got my Ipod connected up and working today. Installed Itunes and initially, I really don't like it very much at all. It doesn't really help that i'm a noob either, i'm not keen on trawling through help files to find out how to do the simplest things.
I find that programs such as MP11 and WinAmp never had this "complexity" to them. They were so easy to use, almost intuitive. I can't say I think that about Itunes.

My main gripe, is that Itunes seems incapable of streaming music off my Ipod. I bought it so I could free up a fair few GB on my main hard drive, and store music, with the capability to have the music "on the go". However, unless I copy the music back to the HDD first, I can't play it. WTF?

I'm going to try and persist with it.

Alexrose1uk · 27 Dec 2006 at 01:03

Am gonna try Anapod trial, if I read it right, it can stream music off and ipod, but states that Itunes cannot. OK, its going to make itself look good to sell a $30 product, but hell, if it works, and works a lot better than Itunes, I may well be tempted to shell out for my brother and mum to use it with thier Ipods.

Morfik · 27 Dec 2006 at 03:49

Jihad said:
In iTunes, what I do is just drag the album art jpeg into the "Drag album art here" part of iTunes for each track, or you can highlight a bunch of tracks from the same album and put the album art in for one of them then it applys it to them all, the way I do my artwork anyhoo

Right, try doing that for 500+ albums. Sounds like lots of fun! Every other programme has the sense to check for folder.jpg files and use them automatically, why can't iTunes?

Alexrose1uk said:
Hmmm, didnt realise Winamp had an Ipod tool addon now. Thanks, will keep an eye on this, as I just got my mum an Ipod Nano, and will probably have to load music on it, and I HATE Itunes with a loathing, I've NEVER liked it.

Winamp comes with a Portable Media Player (PMP) plugin by default now, however it lacks a lot of the functionality of ml_ipod (an alternative Winamp plugin). You can get ml_ipod from here

Tute said:
My main gripe, is that Itunes seems incapable of streaming music off my Ipod. I bought it so I could free up a fair few GB on my main hard drive, and store music, with the capability to have the music "on the go". However, unless I copy the music back to the HDD first, I can't play it. WTF?

You can actually do this quite easily with Winamp + ml_ipod, there's an option in the settings whether to play files form straight from your iPod or your hard disk if they're mirrored there.