I’ve used iTunes on Mac and Windows, and dislike both for their frustratingly simplified interface. Especially when you’ve got thousands of songs to sort through, iTunes still gives you very little leverage or clarity. I stopped using Podcasts awhile back — I just wasn’t interested enough but what I found to favor it over music. But I use my iPod a lot for commuting by subway here in NYC, and it’s also proven useful for moving selected tunes around to various devices that can expose stereo miniplugs for input (e.g. powered speakers in bedroom, radio in kitchen, stereo in car). And I’ve been stuck using iTunes to sync music from my library.
I manage my library of MP3s with MediaMonkey, a pretty good app that comes in free and paid versions. I upgraded for faster ripping and some other features, but it’s cheap ($20?). The UI beats iTunes, and it turns out that it handles iPods very nicely as well. I followed this quick note on how to use it with iPods, and it’s easy.
So now I can forget about iTunes except if I want to sync photos or settings, or something. I don’t have to keep 50MB of iTunes library files around, or remember to import from my library to keep it updated.
Much better.
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