Number one gripe people have with the iPod? That you can't manage it without iTunes and you can't pull songs from it.
OK, that's two gripes. But anyway.
Thank heaven, then for a plugin called ml_iPod, which allows you to manage your little white slice of heaven using WinAmp - and, crucially, bring songs from your iPod back onto your computer.
Wired News has more:
The plug-in... allows iPod users to bypass iTunes and manage music collections in Winamp instead. The iPod is supposed to work with iTunes only. A new version of the software was released Monday.
Justin Frankel, creator of Winamp and the open-source peer-to-peer software Gnutella, initially developed ml_iPod, but programming was taken over by Will Fisher, a computer science student in the U.K.
Fisher and other developers programmed a slew of features, including the ability to synch multiple iPods with Winamp, create smart playlists and -- the most useful option -- the ability to copy songs from an iPod onto a hard drive.
Very useful for those of us who share our music players among a number of different computers... but how long until somebody tries to close it down?
