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+The great charm of the iPod is its ease of use. Getting music onto an iPod is automatic or at most a simple simple one click process, whether you use iTunes or any number of alternatives.

But what about getting music off your iPod? That’s not so simple. In fact, using only the tools provided by Apple, it isn't really possible.

Well okay, you could put your iPod in disk mode and enable hidden folders and rummage around the hard drive negotiating a maze of meaningless file names and strange folder structures, but who wants to do that?

Apple doesn't let you get music off your iPod because it needs to keep the record companies happy. If the RIAA is to be believed, you and I are criminals foaming at the mouth in illegal MP3 trading lust. But, believe it or not, there are in fact a number of legitimate reasons you might need to transfer songs from an iPod to your hard drive.

For instance, suppose your hard drive crashes taking all your MP3's with it? Back up my music you say? But isn't that what my iPod is? Why should I back up my music *twice*? What if the capacity of your iPod is larger than your computer's hard drive and, as you load music onto your iPod, you delete it off your hard drive to conserve space?

In short there are potentially dozens of reasons you might want to transfer music off your iPod and Apple has left you with no appealing options, but they did leave the back door open so to speak.

There are no hardware or firmware restrictions that stop you from transferring music off an iPod, and so a number of non-Apple, third party developers have released tools to help you get your tunes off your iPod and put them wherever you like.

For the last week we've been reviewing such software on the Monkey Bites blog. What follows is our take on the best of the bunch.


**Senuti (Mac)**

Senuti is free and open source Mac-only application that allows you to recover songs, photos and movies from you iPod. Senuti features drag and drop transfer of songs and playlists. Senuti also allows you to copy songs from a Windows formatted iPod.

The main downside to Senuti is that it doesn't recognize duplicate tracks. If you have a playlist with ten songs on your iPod and the same playlist already exists in itunes, Senuti will added the same ten songs again.

You can stop Senuti from duplicating the actual song files by choosing "overwrite songs" in the preferences, but there doesn't seem to be a way to stop the duplication of songs within playlists.

**Good:** Senuti is easy to use and the interface will be familiar to iTunes users. Senuti can copy songs from Windows or Mac formatted iPods, something few of the others can do. 

**Bad:** There is no one-click sync of iPod to iTunes in Senuti (though this is listed in the roadmap). The biggest downside to Senuti is there's no way to avoid duplicates when copying playlists. And of course it's for Mac OS X only.

Wired News rating: 6


**iPodRip (Mac & Windows)**

IPodRip is shareware and costs $14.95. The unlicensed version is not crippled, but will expire after 10 uses, which means if you just need to recover from a hard drive failure or similar one-time problem, iPodRip can do it for free.

IPodRip features, drag-and-drop support for moving songs off your iPod directly into iTunes, as well as one-click importing to restore everything. 

IPodRip also features a number of nice extras not found elsewhere, such as a database integrity check for your iPod DB, an option to export your library information to HTML or XML formats, and sync metadata between your iPod and iTunes.

**Good:** IPodRip can sync iTunes to iPod with one click. Though we only tested the Mac version, there is a Windows version as well. IPodRip offers a host of additional features if you're looking for something more than simple iPod-to-computer transfer.

**Bad:** On the downside iPodRip doesn't have any features to transfer music or videos and of course it isn't free (though it can be used 10 times with no limitations).

Wired News rating: 7


**iPod Access (Mac & Windows)**

Another cross-platform offering, we tested iPod Access on both Windows and Mac with very similar results. 

Copying songs with iPod Access is simple, just highlight the songs you want to copy and click "Add to iTunes." The trial version only allows you transfer five songs at a time, but I had no problems copying songs within the limit.

When it comes to handling song transfers, IPod Access gives you more options than the other programs reviewed, including the option to rename the songs in a variety of formats. Ipod Access also offers the option to only overwrite existing files if the iPod copy is newer.

**Good:** iPod Access did a great job of not duplicating tracks and offers the ability to sync iTunes to iPod with one click. There is a "Clone Playlist" feature, but it's disabled in the trial version so we weren't able to test it.

**Bad:** iPod Access doesn't have the most appealing GUI of the bunch, some will love it's simplicity, others may find it lacking. There's no support for drag-and-drop transfers in iPod Access and at $19.99 it's the second most expensive of the bunch.

Wired News rating: 5

**Anapod Explorer (Windows)**

Anapod Explorer raises the bar somewhat compared to the other programs we looked at. AE is not just a way of recovering files, it also features a whole bunch of other stuff as well. The downside to the additional features is accompanying price increase. A full version of Anapod Explorer is $30 and available for Windows Only.

AE includes a separate program, Anapod Xtreamer, which allows you to browse your iPod via any standard browser. Xtreamer makes it easy to transfer files, not just from your iPod to the connected computer, but to any computer on the network.

There are about a dozen more features I haven't touched on, but since most of them go far beyond our review goals (get music off your iPod) I'll leave them for you to discover.

**Good:** Anapod Explorer can sync iTunes to iPod with one click and does a good job of avoiding duplicate songs. Anapod Explorer's additional features but it in a class of its own.

**Bad:** Anapod Explorer is not free and may be overkill if all you want is a one-time restore of your iPod library.

Wired News rating: 7

**Podworks (Mac)**

Podworks, another Mac-only program, has a number of ways to recover your music from an iPod. Podworks can send the songs straight into iTunes by using the "Send All to iTunes" or transfer songs to any other location on your hard drive. 

Podworks lacks the drag and drop features of others but it does avoid duplicating songs. 

Podworks is shareware and costs $8. There is 30 day trail version which is limited to 250 song transfers.

**Good:** Podworks doesn't duplicate tracks when transferring songs and offers an option to  sync iTunes to iPod with one click. The interface is easy to use and at $8 it's the cheapest of the non-free programs.

**Bad:** Podworks is Mac only and the lack of Universal binary makes it a bit slower on Intel machines than other Mac programs. Also there's no way to view your iTunes Library along side your iPod and no drag-and-drop transfers.

Wired News rating: 6

**Yamipod (Mac & Windows & amp; Linux)**

Yamipod is the only tool out of the bunch that supports all three major operating system. It's also free. Yamipod can transfer songs to and from our iPod and offers a good range of options for how to handle duplicates.

Yamipod also offer some extra features not found in the other programs including the ability to create playlists, send information to last.fm, growl notifications and add lyrics to your iPod.

**Good:** Yamipod's OS support is unmatched and the price can't be beat. The extra features will appeal to those looking for more than just iPod recovery.

**Bad:** There are some issues using Yamipod the most recently released video iPods and iTunes 7, check out the Yamipod forums for more information.

Wired News Rating: 8
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