iTunes, the bad & the good

As some know I have an iPod, as I've travelled around it has been indespensible.. Great for being able to get to sleep in a noisy dorm room in any country (like when the guy in the next dorm is watching to porn on his portable dvd player without headphones - eeww!)

But when it comes to putting music on the iPod and managing what's there for my listening pleasure, there really is only iTunes, I've tried playing with other music software (Winamp does a good job, XPlay allows you to 'mostly' use Windows Media Player).. But for completeness there really isn't anything except iTunes (and it pains me a little to say that)...

Apple has locked me, I can't really chose my software, the user interface is clunkier than Winamp, it uses more system resources, it installs other software (Quicktime) without your choice, and it always runs in the background (you need to know the registry keys or how to use the Services area to kill it properly, and it'll still be back on the next upgrade. There are a bunch of annoying issues with it....

But there's also a lot of stuff that 'just works', for example podcasts. I subscribe through iTunes for podcasts, I can then listen to them on way to and from work. When I get to my pc and plug in the iPod, all by itself it removes the ones I've already listened to and grabs the new shows I haven't heard yet... it. just. works. Winamp has a reasonably good podcast subscription option, but for me it didn't just work, I found I had to find extra plugins, and then manually handle the add/remove of shows (it wouldn't automatically remove podcasts I'd already listened to, either on my pc or on the iPod)....

Like I've said, there's plenty of reasons I don't like iTunes & Apple, but at the end of the day I can 'get around' those issues, for the podcasts and the fact that they just work, makes up a hell of a lot for those issues. Of course as soon as Winamp shows me it just works, I'm switching though. :-)

B