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[Author's note: Before we get started a couple of quick points. As many commenters in our initial post pointed out, you can always copy songs off your iPod via the command line (or by making hidden files visible in the disk browser of your choice). While that's true, it's also true that you can read your email in Mutt or Pine, but most of us don't. I consider the hidden files method to be a last resort, especially give that a number of the programs we'll be looking at are free and make the process of recovering music streamlined and painless.]
First up in our review of iPod circumventors is a [Mac-only program by the name of Senuti][1]. Senuti is free (as in beer) and open source, licensed under the GNU GPL.
Senuti's interface mimics that of iTunes circa version 6 and should be easy for most users to figure out.
You can copy songs in Senuti by simply selecting the songs on your iPod and clicking the copy button. You can also copy playlists via drag-and-drop. By default Senuti will copy the songs to the music folder set in your iTunes preferences, but if you'd like the change that you can do so in Senuti's preferences.
I had no problems copying songs with Senuti and even discovered some music I had forgotten about using the "Hide iTunes Songs" feature. Invoking hide iTunes songs will show only those songs that are only on your iPod, select them, click copy and your songs will be recovered.
The main downside to Senuti is that it doesn't know to not duplicate tracks. If you have a playlist with ten songs on your iPod and the same playlist already exists in itunes, Senuti won't warn your about duplicates. Instead is will simply make copies of songs so you end up with a playlist that now has twenty songs. 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.
Senuti can also copy movies just like songs and can even restore photos from you iPod.
Senuti is developed and maintained Whitney Young; if you like the program you can make a contribution by visiting [fadingred.org][2].
*Good*
* Easy to use, interface will be familiar for iTunes users
* Can copy songs from Windows or Mac formatted iPods
* Ability to view only songs not in your music library
*Bad*
* no one-click sync of iPod to iTunes (though this is listed in the Senuti roadmap)
* No way to avoid duplicates when copying playlists
[1]: http://www.fadingred.org/senuti/ "Senuti"
[2]: http://www.fadingred.org/ "fadingred.org"
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