My love for iTunes have grown only a little since it was first introduced. I'll have to admit that the program can certainly do a lot of things when it comes to managing our media content on your PC's. One of the best things I love about it is being able to easily browse the hundreds, if not thousands, of audio and video podcast out there on the Internet. A lot of people I know of thinks that the only way to actually manage their audio and video contents on their iPhone/iPod is through iTunes. Well, they are wrong. If you dislike iTunes but still want to be able to sync and import your multimedia files to your device, there are many alternatives out there. I'll go over one that I'm especially fond of in this article.
I'll start off by saying that if you are happy with the way you are syncing your media to your iPod or iPhone as of right now, there really isn't much reason to switch to another method. However, you'll still want to read on because I'll show you how you can actually transfer your music from your iPod/iPhone back onto your computer.
One of the main reason I dislike iTunes in general is due to the way it syncs media to your device. Apple recommends that you sync your iPod or iPhone with one and only one computer. Reason being that if you sync with more than one computer, the device thinks that you'll want to get rid of and delete the media you currently have on the device for the media on the second computer. Now I'm not a expert on this issue so that's the way I think it works. What I do know is that basically, the damn device isn't smart enough to employ different sync profiles without doing some serious tweaking. That means that when you have a iPod or iPhone synced with your music library at your home computer, you better think twice the next time you plug in the device into another computer (your friends computer for example) and sync some songs to it because you might find out the hard way that all of your media will actually be erased instead. The reason I say 'might' is because your results may vary. Some of you might know that there is an option in iTunes to 'Manually manage your music and videos' and in some cases, it works. Once the option has been turned on, you'll be allowed to simply drag and drop music from your computer directly into your iPhone/iPod device under iTunes.
If that actually worked everytime, I wouldn't have written this article. Just earlier today, a friend wanted to sync some music from my computer to his iPhone. I checked the same option under iTunes. However, it presented me with a dialog box asking me if I was sure I wanted to manually manage the content on the device and that doing so will erase the media on that device. Needless to say, I hit OK and everything got erased. When I tried turning on that option on my own iPhone, I wasn't presented with that same dialog box which leads me to believe that the option should be applied on the user's own computer. Whatever the case maybe, it's a hassle. I totally forgot about performing the manual sync on his iPhone with Sharepod and so that is why I'm writing it here.
SharePod
Sharepod is a neat little utility that allows you to 'truly' manually manage your iPhone/iPod. The beauty of using this utility is that it doesn't matter how many computers you plug your device into. As long as you are using SharePod, nothing will get deleted via a error sync with iTunes and whatnot. You get to actually select what music and/or videos to sync to your device. Going with the earlier example, if I remembered to have use SharePod on my friend's iPhone, we could have avoided the multimedia content deletion on his device. SharePod is lightweight and is a self-executable so you can bring it along with you on a USB thumb-drive or store it directly on your iPod/iPhone as well. The next time you want to import some media to it, simply fire it up and pick the files you want. That's it. No more syncing (in a iTunes sense), no more headaches. The best part is that SharePod is a two-way street. If you want to dump the songs from your iPhone/iPod back onto your computer, that can be done as well! If your computer suddenly crashed or if your music library accidentally got erased, fear not. Simple use SharePod to copy the songs back onto your hard drive. Let's see iTunes do that for you!
Before proceeding on how to use SharePod, I want to make a quick note. SharePod is not a iTunes replacement. What I mean is that SharePod is not a multimedia manager like iTunes or Windows Media Player. It simply offers you an alternative interface to interact with your iPhone/iPod. It is a manager in that it can only manage the media content on your device only. If all you ever wanted to do was find a hassle-free way of getting music and video onto your iPhone/iPod, give SharePod a try.
Unfortunately, you really can't get rid of iTunes. Sharepod might not be able to detect your iPhone and so the fix for that is to install iTunes and have it initialize your device. SharePod should then recognize it. You don't have to use it, though. However, you will still need iTunes to manage your applications, backup, and other information on your iPhone so technically, you can't really get rid of it.
1. You can download SharePod from here. Extract the SharePod executable and place it in a folder. After you finish using SharePod, it will dump some configuration files in the same location as the SharePod executable.
Although chances are slim, SharePod might be able corrupt your media library on your device. I will not be held responsible if you happen to be the few unlucky individuals.
2. Connect your iPhone/iPod to your computer. If iTune starts up, simply close it out. In fact, I don't think it is recommended that you have both utilities open at the same time. Now, open up SharePod by double-clicking on its executable. SharePod will immediately search for your device. Once found, it will then give you a view of all your media files stored on it. As you can see in the second screenshot, my iPhone is completely empty. But that will soon change.
3. To simply add music or videos to your device, click on the 'Copy to iPod' button at the top. You can either add individual files (great for importing a select list of media content) or choose to add a entire folder (great for importing complete music albums). Click on the appropriate button. A familiar dialog box should pop up asking you to browse to the location of the files/folder you wish to add. Do so and then click OK. Repeat the procedure until you have all the folders or files you want to add. Hit the OK button one more time and SharePod will then begin adding your files to your Apple device. You can see the import progress of each file in a new window. If you try to add incompatible files, SharePod will let you know. To successfully add videos, you should convert them to MP4 first. You can use Format Factory to perform the conversion. Sadly, you can't import photos to your Apple device using SharePod but only being able to export them.
That's it! You have now successfully added media files to your Apple device. Wasn't that painless? To delete media files, simply highlight them, right click, and then choose 'Delete from iPod'. That's it. Your MP3s and videos should now show up in your library (under the iPod app if you are using the iPhone). If you are a big Coverflow fan, you'll be disappointed because your album cover pictures don't get synced when you use SharePod. Therefore when in Coverflow view, you will not be able to see your album cover arts, although you'll still be able to browse through your albums. Good news however is that if you properly tagged your individual MP3 files with cover art, they do show up when you play the song. I'm not sure if I'm doing anything wrong (it could be due to SharePod's inability to sync photos) but if someone knows the solution to the cover art problem, please do share!
4. You can also use SharePod to backup your media files. If you want to export a select number of files, first you highlight them in SharePod and then clicking the 'Copy to PC' icon at the top. You'll then get to choose a directory to copy those files to and SharePod also gives you the option to automatically import those copied tracks into your iTunes library. If you don't plan on using iTunes, uncheck this option. Next, you get to select how the music copied to your computer will look like. There are a couple of presets to choose from or you can customize your own setting. Hit OK and let SharePod go to work. Once the process is done, head over to the directory you have chosen and you'll see the exported media. Very awesome indeed.
5. If you want to create a full backup, select the 'Backup iPod' button instead. The procedure and interface is similar to the previous step but the main difference here is that every media file and playlist will get exported.
6. Seeing all of your media in one long list can be a nightmare to sort through. Because using SharePod means that we are now manually managing our media, we need some way to easily filter through our files and quickly find what we want. Luckily, SharePod includes a very handy search feature. Click on the 'Search iPod' button and you can filter your library by Title, Artist, Album and/or Genre.
7. Click on the 'Options' button if you want to configure how SharePod behaves. I've never had to change anything since using SharePod but your experience may vary.
8. Once you are done using SharePod to manage your iPhone/iPod, be sure to click on the 'Eject iPod' button before disconnecting your device from your computer!
In the End...
I wonder why couldn't iTunes make importing music into our device as easy as using SharePod. Sure, SharePod isn't for advance users and its options/capabilities as a whole can't be compared to iTunes but it at least doesn't frustrate me when all I want to do is importing media to my device (especially on different computers). I'm sure many people out there will disagree with me (and most will likely start listing all the awesome stuff iTunes can do). When it comes to other things, I like to get real technical with it but for some reason when it comes to my media players and devices, I like to keep it simple. If you like to import media from computers other than your own, SharePod is a must have.
While SharePod lacks many features such as not being able to import pictures and managing podcast subscriptions, it does what I want most and it does it in the most simplest fashion: import my media to my iPhone! The import speed isn't all that great either with SharePod but it's manageable. iPod and iPhone users who feels like being chained at the ankle to iTunes, feel free to try out SharePod. Granted, we all still need to use iTunes to import and manage our podcast subscriptions and not to mention to download/purchase/sync iTune applications but once someone comes out with a hassle free utility to do those tasks as well, we will be another step away from giving iTunes the boot.
I'm sure there are many other utilities and applications similar to SharePod so if are using one of those said programs, please feel free to comment and share your experience with them in the comments section below. What the heck, if you want to rag on me for dissing iTunes, you can do so as well.
