Senuti could be useful to transfer music after a hard drive crash, the purchase of a new computer or just to move music between computers. When your iPod or iPhone is connected, Senuti instantly lists all the songs and playlists that it can detect. It can automatically add songs to your iTunes library or you can define a folder for them to go into. If you are worried about duplicates, Senuti displays a small blue dot next to every song you already have in your library.

The first thing that strikes you is the simplicity of the interface followed by the speed of Senuti. It uses a small file known as 'iTunesDB' on your iPod or iPhone device to rapidly extract every bit of essential information for every song and playlist. In addition, it supports simple dragging and dropping of both music and playlists, which will not only copy songs to your computer and add them to iTunes, but will make a new playlist with the same name and add all of the songs to that list.

Some users have complained of instability issues but I experienced no such problems. Senuti detected my iPod's songs instantly and transfers to iTunes were extremely quick.

Senuti offers a quick and simple way of transferring songs and playlists from your iPod or iPhone to your Mac.

Download Senuti 1.2.7 in Softonic

Download iPodDisk 2.0 b1 in Softonic

Floola can be run directly from your iPod and the good thing is it requires no installation. Floola supports almost all features offered by iPods including photos, artwork, podcasts and smart playlists. It automatically converts any incompatible audio or video file so that you can copy almost any file to it. It allows adding YouTube and MySpace videos with a single click. Now it even makes it possible to keep your Google calendars synched.

The speed and ease of use of Floola are what impress the most. Copying, adding and extracting songs to and from an iPod is extremely easy. You can easily manage, import and export (m3u, pls) playlists and it's also integrated with Last.fm. Adding videos is also extremely easy - just copy the URL into Floola and it will automatically copy them across.

There are many more impressive features to Floola that make it a truly excellent application for managing your iPod from your Mac.

Download Floola 5.9.1 in Softonic

The creator of Senuti Free says: "The author of Senuti distributed copies of it for years under the GPL, which states: 'If you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must pass on to the recipients the same freedoms that you received.

You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights.'" However, as a result of this you obviously won't receive any support from the developer of Senuti as the app has now moved to a paid model.

Senuti could be useful to transfer music after a hard drive crash, the purchase of a new computer or just to move music between computers. When your iPod or iPhone is connected, Senuti Free instantly lists all the songs and playlists that it can detect. It can automatically add songs to your iTunes library or you can define a folder for them to go into. If you are worried about duplicates, Senuti Free displays a small blue dot next to every song you already have in your library.

The first thing that strikes you is the simplicity of the interface followed by the speed of Senuti Free. It uses a small file known as 'iTunesDB' on your iPod or iPhone device to rapidly extract every bit of essential information for every song and playlist. In addition, it supports simple dragging and dropping of both music and playlists, which will not only copy songs to your computer and add them to iTunes, but will make a new playlist with the same name and add all of the songs to that list.

Senuti Free detected our iPod's songs instantly and transfers to iTunes were extremely quick. However, Senuti can be unstable at times and because this is an open source version of the app, there are no fixes or support for such problems. If you experience too many problems with Senuti Free, you're highly advised to download the paid version of Senuti instead which offers regular support and fixes.

Senuti Free offers a quick and simple way of transferring songs and playlists from your iPod or iPhone to your Mac.

Download Senuti Free 0.52 in Softonic

iRip transfers music from your iPod back to your iTunes Library, allows you to listen to music directly on your iPod and iPhone (thus saving valuable disk space) and it supports major formats: i.e. MP3, AAC, and Audible.com Content. iRip could be particularly useful in a situation where your Mac has crashed and your iPod remains the only place where you've saved all of your music.

When you start iRip, you're asked if you want to perform a manual or automatic transfer to iTunes. We opted for manual, and you simply select a track and then click the 'Import' button at the bottom of the interface. When the transfer is complete, a green tick appears next to the track. You can also play songs with the playback controls at the bottom of the iRip interface. There are very few preferences but in an application as simple as this, you don't really need any.

The only annoying thing with iRip is that a nag screen floats permanently next to the main screen asking you to register and telling you that you only have 100 song transfers left. iRip also tends to occasionally import ratings incorrectly so don't be surprised if some of your tracks appear downgraded when imported.

Simple to use and very fast, iRip is definitely up there with Senuti as a powerful unlocking solution for iPods and iPhones.

Download iRip (iPodRip) 2.1.3 in Softonic

Music Rescue is designed to come to the rescue when all else is lost. If you have an iPod, then chances are that your iTunes-purchased music can be recovered easily but for music that you've ripped from CD or recorded from your vinyl collection, your only hope is either a backup or via Music Rescue. Music Rescue can not only save your music, video, podcasts, audiobooks, audio recordings and notes but can automatically restore them exactly where they came from.

Throughout, Music Rescue is a superbly presented and executed program. The interface is elegant and it's almost impossible to go wrong because everything is so clearly displayed. Once you've connected your device, the main window is split into two areas, not unlike iTunes. On the left, you have your device and data available such as Music, Video and Podcasts. On the right you have the track listings corresponding to each one featuring the rating, artist, track duration etc. You can also search through the track listings using the search box at the top.

When you've selected the tracks you want to save, click 'Copy' in the bottom-right and corner. For each source - whether it be podcasts, music or videos - you can configure exactly how and where they are copied before you hit the copy button. That's it - once the progress bars have completed, your backups will be complete. There is also one other way to perform recovery and that's via "QuickRecover". QuickRecover gives you less control over the tracks you recover and instead simply recovers everything at once.

There are a few drawbacks to Music Rescue. Ratings, Play Counts and Last Played info are not recovered although these are hardly the most important things on your mind if you've just lost your entire music collection. It does however include backups of your album art.

Overall, Music Rescue is an excellent recovery utility for anyone who has lost their precious tunes.

Download Music Rescue 4.5 in Softonic

Its name is Yamipod, an acronym that summarizes this program’s main function perfectly well: Yet Another Manager for iPod. That’s it. Without even needing to install it on your system, Yamipod will take care of your iPod content management, providing you with a clean interface and simple, easy-to-use tools.

Once you copy the program to your PC, you can run it straight away, although it won’t really work until you plug in your iPod. Yamipod will then scan its contents and list all your MP3 folders and files on its interface. Also, the program does not launch automatically when you connect the iPod to your PC, which may be a nuisance for some but certainly a relief for others. I prefer to take control over when and why my software starts up.

Yamipod’s simple interface displays a list with all the songs stored in the iPod and allows you to perform different managing tasks. For instance, you can browse through your music by artist or album, check the playlists you’ve created or view extended information about each song. You can even listen to music with the built-in player. However, we should note that we had some problems testing this as the player didn’t seem to work properly.

Perhaps the most interesting function is the possibility to copy both MP3 and AAC files to and from the iPod, which makes it very easy to update your music library. If you want to copy music to your PC from the iPod, select the songs and click on the “Copy song to...” option in the context menu. To copy them back to the iPod, just drag and drop the files from the Windows Explorer onto the program’s interface.

Finally, another very interesting tool is the “Remove duplicates” utility. No matter how careful you are, you’ll end up having duplicate songs in your iPod, especially if it’s a large one. Yamipod will find them by comparing ID tag data and file sizes, showing a list of possible candidates before actually deleting them.

Yamipod is certainly no serious competition for iTunes but still, it’s a very interesting option for those of us who own an iPod and need a simple, neat and easy-to-use file manager.

Download YamiPod 1.8 in Softonic

Not only that, but ripping a DVD is really quick and you don't have to get lost in all sorts of settings.

In some ways this is linked to the limitations of the program. There are barely any settings to let you optimize the ripping and conversion of DVDs, so you're pretty much left with what DVD2Pod spits out.

Some users have also complained at a few bugs and crashes with the application. Unfortunately, since DVD2Pod has been discontinued, don't expect any improvements to it.