Effortless iTunes Alternative

[Buddhabreath]

I have long hated dealing with ITunes to copy music files onto my iPhone, but recently discovered a product, WALTR 2 for Windows which allows me to simply drag and drop my FLAC files into a "drop area" and boom! it appears nicely formatted in the IOS music app in HQ and incredibly fast. Also works with videos and other file types. Worth every penny to me, so I thought I'd mention this in case anyone else was looking for such a solution.

[Jerjo]

I've got a little iPhone 4 that I have used as an iPod when I'm on the treadmill. I can't add new music because iTunes no longer recognizes it. I wonder if this would work.

[Buddhabreath]

^ I think it’s worth a try. You can download a free trail version. They claim it works on all IOS devices, if I recall correctly.

[JKL2000]

I’ll definitely check this out, thanks.

[Ground and Sky's Ghost]

I have long hated dealing with ITunes to copy music files onto my iPhone

A while back I inherited an ancient iPod Touch that my daughter didn't want any more. I quickly came to loathe iTunes and went looking for an alternative that would work in Windows. At the time, a lot of people were recommending Media Monkey, so that's what I went with. It uses iTunes drivers, so you have to also have iTunes installed, and there's a bit of a learning curve (the program is designed to be the be-all, end-all music manager for your computer), but I like it a lot better than iTunes. And it's free (I think there's a paid version with more features, but the free version works).

To add music from your computer to your iDevice, you select "Music" from the tree on the left side, pick "Add/Rescan files to the library" under the File menu (which then lists the selected files in Media Monkey's "library"), then right click one or more files from the library and pick Send To -> iPod.

To remove things from the iPod, you just expand the iPod node of the tree, click what you want to remove (Music, Videos, etc), then select the files you want to remove and press the Delete key.

I'm fairly sure it works with iPhones, but I don't own one so I can't say for sure.

[Dave (in MA)]

That sounds better than iTunes, but still annoying.

I don't want a "library" and I don't want to "sync". I just want to hook up the device and copy files to it like I do with all of my non iCrap devices.

[Jerjo]

I tried setting up Media Monkey and it immediately went to the wrong library and is stuck there. Deleting the piece of crap. I'll give WALTR a shot.

[Ground and Sky's Ghost]

I tried setting up Media Monkey and it immediately went to the wrong library and is stuck there. Deleting the piece of crap. I'll give WALTR a shot.

Yeah, like I said it has a pretty steep learning curve. Took me a long while to figure out how to use it the first time, and because I only rarely update the iPod Touch I always have to spend a while re-orienting myself when I do use it. But I'm a cheap SOB and the price was right (free). And now that I've got it figured out it's actually fairly easy to use. Just not at all intuitive. But then again neither is iTunes (or any other Apple software I've had the misfortune of having to use).

[Jerjo]

True, iTunes is the worst

[aith01]

True, iTunes is the worst

It wasn't always. Back when it was just used for music, like in the early 2000s, it was pretty great.