bzzlink skrev:COPY FILES FROM YOUR iPOD TO YOUR MAC
10 utilities for extracting files from your iPod
BY AAYUSH ARYA
Apple’s tight control over the iTunes-iPod-iPhone ecosystem has a lot of benefits, yet it has its downsides—you can’t copy songs from your iPod to your Mac, for one.
That missing piece of the puzzle is available, however, from a host of third-party developers. Here’s a look at ten such apps to help you decide which one(s) should be in your arsenal (for longer reviews and a full comparison chart, visit macworld.com/5798).
Expod
Fitting squarely in the bare-bones category, Steve Joynt’s free Expod (3.01/2; expod.joynt.net) immediately detects a connected iPod upon launch; you can either select individual songs you’d like to copy (with the help of a search box) or copy them all. Although Expod shows the playlists on your iPod, it can’t copy them, and the app doesn’t copy files directly into iTunes.
iPod Access
Findley Designs’ $20 iPod Access (3.01/2; http://www.findleydesigns.com) has most of the features you’d expect—it lets you browse and search songs, supports videos, and can import songs from your iPod into any folder on your Mac or straight into iTunes (even making sure that it screens out any duplicates). It also lets you import your playlists with the click of a button. However, the user interface is dated.
iRip
The Little App Factory’s $20 iRip (3.01/2; thelittleappfactory.com), previously known as iPodRip, has a simple interface and a few nice features. Beyond the normal abilities to search for selected songs and copy them to your Mac, iRip lets you import those songs into iTunes and even copies over the playlists from your iPod. But when you change iPods while iRip is running, it doesn’t refresh the contents automatically.
iTunesFS
Marcus Mueller’s free iTunesFS (3.01/2; http://www.mulle-kybernetik.com) isn’t really an app—it’s a FUSE-based file system that you use with MacFUSE. When you plug in an iPod (iTunesFS doesn’t support the iPhone or iPod touch) and double-click the app, you’ll see an iTunesFS volume mount on your desktop. From there you can copy a file or folder to your Mac by dragging it either to your desktop or directly into iTunes. The only way to “recover” playlists is to drag a playlist folder into the Playlists area of iTunes’ Source list. This isn’t the best tool for getting songs off your iPod, but it does give you free access to the contents of your iPod.
Music Rescue
KennettNet Software’s £10 Music Rescue (m3.01/2; http://www.kennettnet.co.uk) is one of the most full-featured apps of this bunch, and it’s my top pick. The interface is well designed and utilitarian, and feels right at home on the Mac. Music Rescue lets you see both the songs you already have in your iTunes library and the ones you don’t. You can even create advanced filters for importing songs with specific metadata, and it supports playlists and will re-create them exactly as they are on the iPod.
Pod to Mac
Pod to Mac (4.0; http://www.podtomac.com) used to be free for Mac users, but now costs $20 (although an introductory price of $10 was available at press time; and you can still download an older version). Even though the design has improved with the paid version, the user interface is still sloppily put together and feels alien on the Mac. However, this app also happens to be quite full-featured.
PodWorks
Sci-Fi Hi-Fi’s PodWorks (3.01/2; $8; http://www.scifihifi.com/podworks) has a low price and a seemingly well-rounded set of features, but it doesn’t deliver on several of its promises. Its playlist support is extremely buggy—for instance, I always ended up with multiple copies of the same song in the playlists PodWorks created. Also, although it has menu-based options for playing back music and controlling volume, none of those ever actually worked in my testing.
Senuti
Like Music Rescue, FadingRed’s Senuti (3.01/2; $18; http://www.fadingred.com)—yes, that’s iTunes spelled backward—has most of the features you’d be looking for. There are a few omissions though: You can’t drag songs onto the desktop, and you have to drag playlists into iTunes’ Source list for Senuti to re-create them on your Mac. Furthermore, it does not have a browse feature or one-click automatic recovery.
TouchCopy
Wide Angle Software’s TouchCopy (mmm; $25; http://www.wideanglesoftware.com) does everything you could possibly expect it to and then some. However, like a lot of cross-platform, Java-based applications, it crams all that functionality into a poorly designed interface with a startling lack of attention to detail. Its two major flaws are the significant amount of time it takes to generate the list of items on your iPod (especially when it is first launched), and the completely alien user interface.
TuneAid
DigiDNA’s TuneAid (4.0; $20; http://www.digidna.net) has great potential but falls short when it comes to user interface design. It lets you search and sort your tracks, browse through them by metadata, and play them back while you decide which ones you want to import. It fully supports playlists, and you can import songs to any folder. About the only thing that’s missing is the deliciouslooking UI that has been the hallmark of many a great Mac app.
Aayush Arya is a regular Macworld blogger living in India. Senior Editor Jonathan Seff contributed to this article.
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