All I want is something that will allow me to drag-and-drop MP3 files onto my iPod Shuffle. I don't want transcoding, video support, backup-your-iPod, or anything like that. For example, WinAmp would be too bloated, because it also plays music. I don't need that.

Suggestions?

Doesn't it just work that way in "mass-storage" mode?

DoubleTwist

Songbird

I've used both and I think Songbird is a little further along and more focused on you using your own library. DoubleTwist makes it really easy to use your existing iTunes library.

I'm not positive how "light" each of them is, but I've tried them both and liked Songbird a lot. I'd still be using it if I didn't have a Zune Pass for my ZuneHD.

Oh, and Bruno hates Songbird

You called it. Songbird has everything (and more) that Roger doesn't want.

Songbird is the definition of bloat and makes iTunes look like a wisp. It's basically like running Firefox loaded with extensions for music playback and management.

That's exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for. I'll have a play with them later.

Yeah, my question title wasn't clear. I don't want music management on my PC at all. I manage my tunes with some scripts and utilities of my own, and I play them back with WMP11.



Does it run about a million services that I neither need nor want? I'm thinking for example of Bonjour. If not, then it's lighter than iTunes.

You don't need Bonjour for iTunes. And Songbird is stuffed full of plugins and other bits. It's feature overload, but it can't even handle the basics even half as well as iTunes.

At this point I pretty much use iTunes only for tag manipulation (in Mac OS) - along with MP3Tag (in Windows). All my music is kept in a nice file hierarchy and playback is done through the best music playing software available, Squeezebox Server (which can output through Squeezebox units, the computer it's running on or any other computer).

Are you going to tell the team responsible for the Windows iTunes installer that, or should I?

Songbird is Teh Evil for worse reasons than that. It's like XBMC -- i.e., worse even than Firefox -- for nominally being open-source but in fact being stupidly, obstructively difficult to build from those open sources. Songbird expects you to download a whole bunch of binary dependencies for your system before you even start... a hopeless fail on the Joel test. (item #2 -- even if you loosen its requirement to the traditional three (four) build steps configure; make; make check; sudo make install.) Part of the implicit (but, unfortunately, not explicit) deal with open source is that the source has primacy and binary releases are a convenience; Songbird is part of a regrettable trend towards giving the binary release primacy and adding the source releases as afterthoughts or even not at all (in Songbird the source "releases" are tags, not tarballs).

Peter

They already know, and provide detailed information on how to selectively install iTunes and other components for enterprise deployment. Bonjour is only required when using an AppleTV, Airport Express (for music streaming), iTunes remote, or music sharing to other iTunes users.

While you're right, and I won't disagree that it runs pretty bloated, it's better than the 4-5 constantly running processes that iTunes installs without your chosing.

And Tom, that guide doesn't excuse it. They should simply give you the option of running Bonjour or not. Why do you need a guide for deploying iTunes in an enterprise environment?

Most people have no idea what Bonjour is, or that they are even using it. By making it an easy to find option, it increases the chance a novice computer user will turn it off without realizing the impact it will have on their Apple TV. This causing them to either return the product, or call Apple support, incurring cost. Thats at least my theory, that it's a business decision. I can't provide an exact reasoning behind it.

As for "4 or 5 processes", they wouldn't impact performance on a modern machine. No more then the 50-60 or so processes Windows 7 runs out of the box. I'm not necessarily defending the decision, but Apple brings the tech they need to run on Windows platforms and provide the same services they do on the OS X side. Exactly the same way Microsoft Office and the Video for Windows codec installs other Microsoft components into OS X to function properly.

As for enterprise deployment, Apple sells this somewhat popular smartphone, and even 10% of Microsoft employees use it to access their work e-mail.

I don't have Apple TV. In fact, the only Apple software I have on my computer is iTunes. Can I just delete Bonjour without causing any problems?

tanstaafl.

Even if you don't uninstall it you can go into the services panel and stop then disable it.

Done. Thank you.

tanstaafl.

Maybe not performance (except on my netbook), but definitely battery life. Moreover, now that Windows 7 has event-triggered, demand-started services, there's no need to have the majority of those processes permanently running at all...