Synchronise Nearly Any Storage Device With iTunes
Palm’s Pre smartphone has received fairly positive press coverage for claiming to sync “seamlessly” with iTunes. The Boy Genius Report blog points out that free software can do pretty much the same thing with any removable drive.
iTunes Agent, a free Windows app, sits in the system tray and lets you turn anything that plugs in through a USB slot and can store things into an iTunes-friendly device. Plug in your device, create a “New” device in iTunes Agent’s preferences, give it a name, and point to a folder where you want synchronised music to be kept, and the software creates a unique file to identify the device to itself and iTunes. Take note that it will wipe out any music manually placed in there already, but from then on out, iTunes Agent takes care of your music transfers from a single iTunes playlist and a system tray icon that you can click “Synchronize Now” from.
On Macs, The Boy Genius Report recommends iTuneMyWalkman for a similar experience to iTunes Agent, although that software actually looks more integrated and easier to manage than its Windows counterpart from the screenshots.
Some phones and MP3 players come with their own iTunes hook-ins, but if you’ve got another third-party solution to syncing non-Apple media players to iTunes, let us know in the comments. But, every phone can sync with iTunes … [Boy Genius Report]
- Next Post: No More Free App Re-Downloads On iPhones »
- « Previous Post: Browse, Create And Share Recipes At Nibbledish
Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)
@Troed SÃ¥ngberg:
Doesn't seem to support any device from RIM. Doesn't even claim to support generic Mass Storage mode (although it does list that mode for a few specific phone devices.)
Fail. Either on the product, or the website...
I'm getting ready to wipe my wife's old computer and turn it into a speedy linux box. I have ZERO experience with iTunes and I'm wondering if I can just dump her music onto my external harddrive. Do I need a program like this to do that? She has an iPod, but it is only 6 gigs and she has around 20 gigs of music that she doesn't want to lose.
whiteflea
I'm put off by the whole "single playlist" part of iTunes Agent. I have a lot of playlists grouped by a variety of criteria.
For iTunes Agent users:
Assuming I'm willing to mash them all together into a single "shuffle" list, can I at least use a smart playlist to aggregate sub-lists then sync that smart playlist to the device?
Otherwise, has anybody used an iTunes tool that will allow me to sync multiple playlists?
I use iTunes Sync. It monitors the devices you add to its list, and a playlist you assign to that device. Learned about it here on LH.
joandrade
@Dilpickle1: Not that i would want to. But if you could, You could sync on OSX
Dilpickle1
The Palm Pre iTunes sync is fundamentally different from the solutions outlined in this article.
1. It doesn't require you to install anything.
2. It doesn't require you to do anything to sync beyond connecting your device.
3. It actually syncs (all playlists, ratings, play counts, etc).
The reason it's been getting attention is because it's just like iPod syncing. Average users don't want to learn what "synchronize pattern" means and shouldn't have to.
Including the "Device Info" screenshot and claiming it's "pretty much the same thing" is hilarious. That's like saying a Windows Mobile phone is pretty much the same thing as an iPhone.
Btw, you forgot to mention doubleTwist :-)
[www.doubletwist.com]
Jon Lech Johansen
Could you.. uh.. Sync your zune with itunes?
Dilpickle1
@perryizgr8: iTunes does suck in some areas, but they've got me hooked with Genius. It's like they hurt me so often and when I go to leave them forever they jump up and say "come back! I swear I can change! See? I'm making improvements!" and makes me remember why I liked them in the first place.
then in 3 weeks it's back to beating me up again with slow performance and random outbursts of angry error messages and it makes me wonder why I liked them in the first place.
jquack
I would love to see a Lifehacker article about exactly the opposite: how to get your Apple product to synch with something, anything other than iTunes.
A gracious friend is passing on her Shuffle after I lost my mp3 player, and I only said yes after doing some research and finding out that indeed, there were small, simple programs that would allow me to NOT use iTunes.
sagetyrtle
all fine and dandy. but why would anyone want itunes to work with any device? i use it only because my ipod does not play well with anything else. in fact let me say it, itunes sux!
perryizgr8
But do any of these support sending data BACK to iTunes such as played statues, number of plays, etc?
ShyamariHill
I use doubleTwist to sync music and convert videos. Also works for reverse-sync between any iPod and my computer. Came in handy to drag and drop my boyfriend's iPod to my iTunes :-)
[www.doubletwist.com]
icelandgrrl
Salling Mediasync. Windows and Mac, and supports more than just USB Mass Storage modes.
[www.salling.com]
[www.salling.com]
Troed SÃ¥ngberg
While we're talking iTunes...it sucks every time you have a different instance of iTunes open it completely gives the cold shoulder to your ipod[This ipod is synced with another..]Is there a hack to overcome this?
@goodywitch: i use windows mostly. i tried mediamonkey and songbird. too many bugs. thanks for telling me about foobar and winamp. i will try them now. biggest thing i hate about itunes is that i have to use only one computer with the ipod.
perryizgr8
@whiteflea: There should be no worries backing up the music to an external drive.
Works great with LG KS360
Ruairi O Gallchoir
@perryizgr8: Have you tried mediamonkey, floola/sharepod/yamipod, songbird, foobar2k, winamp? (I have no idea what system you have, assuming windows.) I have an ipod, but I don't have iTunes.
@sagetyrtle: Definitely - iTunes sucks - it's slow, restrictive, lacks basic features, doesn't work on Linux. Unfortunately, there's apparently no other way to sync to an iPhone.
I'm running iTunes on windows in a virtualbox on linux with usb forwarding to sync my iphone. This is rather resource-intensive though, and the usb capture isn't very reliable.
I'd like to see the iPhone software include a way to sync to an iPhone over TCPIP, even if they restricted it to WiFi. Even better if they opened up the protocol. They're behind the Zune on this.
@perryizgr8: I PERSONALLY use foobar2k (you need the foo_dop componenet
foo_dop: [yuo.be] ) and floola, if that makes any difference.
Floola is great if you're using multiple computers, but fb2k for only one computer (but it doesn't tie you down to one collection, either).
@salling:
Codecs aside, that's exactly what some of the other tools out there support.
For my example, I have two car stereos that accept media files on a USB Mass Storage device. One is quite smart about drilling down into directories, the other is a bit dumb, but even that one understands the concept of media files grouped in sub directories on a mass-storage device. If I include files that it can't play (e.g. DRM'd iTunes songs) it just ignores them with no ill effects. With Flash being so cheap these days I just have a pile of 2G-4G drives that I load with a vaguely iTunes-like directory structure according to my moods. It would be a time saver to be order to manage the file contents via playlists.
For myself, depending on how complex the list of assorted codecs was, I wouldn't mind manually specifying that either. CarStereoA supports AAC, MP3, WMA, etc. while CarStereoB only supports MP3 and WMA isn't too hard for me to figure out.
@MikeHerbst:
Support for some RIM devices is coming very soon.
As for "generic Mass Storage" support; with all due respect, there's no such thing in my mind. Unless, of course, you expect the user to manually tell the software where to copy files, what codecs are supported, and what other requirements the device impose on media.
Cheers.
--
Salling
salling