02-25-2008, 10:00 AM

I haven't yet installed iTunes on my new iMac, and it's mainly because I don't (gulp!) own an iPod!!! Well, technically, we have one in the house as I bought my wife an iTouch/Bose Dock for her birthday, but I installed iTunes on her machine (HP Pavilion) and all is well. I don't use it, I simply load her (and my daughter's) music and pictures for her. BTW, the iTouch is awesome, and someday I'll get an iPhone.

Anyway... I have a lot of music on _my_ PC that I'm transferring over to the iMac, and I'm wondering what my alternatives are as far as organizing it/playing it goes. Some is from CDs I own, some is from the online iTunes apple store where my daughter bought songs/albums, and there's quite a bit of old P2P stuff that I've had for years.

My concern with iTunes is that it won't accept anything but songs purchased through apple... and maybe some CDs. Maybe that's wrong but I don't want to install stuff if there are other alternatives that would work as smoothly. So can someone "splain" to me whether I'm wrong/right, and if there are nice alternatives... what are they?

Oh yeah... one last thing. Whatever alternative I pick, I'm hoping that it'll allow me to organize and upload/download pictures to and from an iTouch/iPhone when I get my own.

02-25-2008, 10:27 AM

if you want it to be compatible with the iphone / touch it will have to be itunes.
also if you want to listen to the music you bought on the itunes store it will have to be done in itunes. and last but not least, itunes will play any music you have from your other computer So in-conclusion, I say you don't really need an alternative since itunes seams to be your best bet based on what you want to do.

02-25-2008, 10:41 AM

I have always used itunes and have done all types of music including p2p, ripped cds, ripped other ipods, and itunes store and they are all compatable with itunes. The only thing you wil have to do is authorize your new iMac with the apple store. Other then that you should not have any problems changing over to the mac.

02-25-2008, 11:01 AM

If your iMac is new, it already has iTunes, unless you deleted it.

The only music that will not be compatible are the ones that are protected (non-iTMS DRM'd tracks) and those in incompatible formats. If they are all in unprotected MP3 format, then you should be ok.

02-25-2008, 12:54 PM

There is no such things as an ITouch.

02-25-2008, 05:03 PM

Yes, its brand new and I haven't deleted anything so its there and asks me if I want to listen to music using iTunes or Quicktime and I've been using quicktime because I wasn't sure I wanted iTunes. I had seen some stuff online on iTunesRIP but it doesn't look like there's a whole lot of support these days. A friend of mine uses a program I think is called "stationripper" and I know there's a similar Mac program but I forget the name. I just want to be sure I can use multiple sources for media and not just be forced to buy from apple.

02-25-2008, 05:22 PM

Itunes is not just a place to buy music. You import into it just fine.

02-25-2008, 06:19 PM

iTunes plays everything for me.
Bought online, ripped, P2P'd, mp3, mp3.pro, (Don't know about other formats, mp3 is all I use) and it's doing it from a shared PC drive where the files are actually stored.

02-25-2008, 08:30 PM

one thing that itunes can do that quicktime can't is display your songs in a convenient little list that you can sort by date, name, artist, album etc. Also, iTunes will not play only songs purchased from apple, but virtualy any mp3 or mp4.

11-12-2008, 01:11 AM

Since I switched from PC a number of months ago I'm disappointed with Itunes. It doesn't do a great job sorting in some of the ways Windows players do. I can't play WMA files. One nice thing with PC's is there are lots of alternatives for players. Seems like mac is a one trick pony with Itunes. They want to lock you into their store. I can at least play the wma's on QT with the flip4mac.

11-12-2008, 02:33 AM

iTunes works for me, otherwise VLC is an excellent media player as well...