Tech Talk: Bloated and presciptive

OWNING an iPod – or, for that matter, any other Apple device, means installing iTunes on a computer. No ifs, no buts and no options. No other piece of hardware is as prescriptive. Apple has good reason for working this way: iTunes is a shop and iPods are designed first and foremost to play back music bought this way. With about 160 million registered users, it’s plainly working for many people.

But iTunes has disadvantages for PC users. It’s stuffed with what the industry calls bloatware – unnecessary programmes that slow down machines and can even compromise security. And as every iTunes user knows, it’s incredibly restrictive: you can’t, for instance, transfer a song to your iPod and then copy it on to another PC. You can’t even copy it back to the same PC if you’ve had to reinstall Windows.

Owners of tablets and MP3 players from other manufacturers face no such restrictions. Instead of Apple’s “walled garden” of content, they have the whole internet to choose from and can play more formats too.

There’s nothing you can do about that, but to get around many other restrictions, many iTunes alternatives have sprung up – software that can manage music and synchronise iPods without completely taking over computers. If you currently use Windows Media Player, these serve as souped-up alternatives too.

MediaMonkey is currently the gold standard in music managers, letting you manipulate your record collection any way you choose and giving you complete control over which songs you synchronise to an iPod and when.

It’s free to download but for the most demanding users, a paid “gold” version is available.

The other leading contender is Winamp, a music player that’s been around as long as Windows itself. You can customise it to your heart’s content and again, the standard version is free. The version for Android smart phones is something of an acquired taste.

Songbird is a more elegant, free organiser that also works on smart phones. Installed on phones and PCs, synchronising records and podcasts is seamless.

Apple seems to be heeding all this. The new version of its iOS mobile operating system is the first to let you set up an iPad or iPhone without a PC.