Anapod Explorer

Anapod Explorer
By Ian Betteridge September 30, 2004	Be the first to comment on this article
Any iPod or iPod mini; Windows 98SE or later. Editor Rating:
iTunes is a great piece of software for playing MP3's, with one of the most accessible interfaces built, but it's not for everyone. On Windows in particular, it looks somewhat out of place, and Apple's efforts to turn iTunes into a truly Windows-style application have been minimal at best. And, of course, if iTunes isn't your preferred MP3 player, you're simply going to be out of luck when it comes to using the iPod. Enter Anapod Explorer, which is the nicest and most comprehensive piece of Windows software for getting the most out of the iPod that we've yet seen. Anapod integrates with Windows Explorer, allowing you to directly drag and drop audio files on to the iPod from any folder on the PC. Uniquely, it supports conversion of audio files from formats that the iPod doesn't understand – such as Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, or unprotected WMA – into MP3, so you don't have to worry about what format your music is in. However, copying doesn't have to be a manual process. Anapod's SpeedSync feature allows you to designate any number of folders as being synchronised to the iPod, so that all the files within them are transferred over whenever the iPod is connected to your PC. What's more, Anapod supports creating play lists directly within Windows Explorer, simply dragging tracks into and out of the play list at will. If you have pre-existing play lists created in any of the popular formats by applications such as WinAmp, you can also just drag the play list directly on to the iPod, and have all the tracks on it automatically downloaded. Of course, this is a two-way process: drag a play list from your iPod to the PC, and Anapod creates a new folder and copies all the tracks in that play list to the PC. And Anapod Explorer does more than music, too: you can copy over all your contacts from Outlook with a single click, as well as creating iPod notes directly by typing on your PC. There are some other nice features too, which allow you to play the music on your iPod across a network, from any machine which supports MP3 streamed over HTTP, even allowing you to play your music through a web browser. Our only problem with Anapod Explorer came when occassionally it would refuse to recognize the iPod. However, within less than a week the software was patched to fix this issue - and with the product being patched on average every two weeks, bugs tend not to last for long. Overall, if you're using an iPod with Windows and you want to do more than iTunes is capable of, or you simply want the freedom to use your iPod in a different way, then Anapod Explorer is for you. Had this been $50, we would have thought it was decent value: at $25, it should be an essential purchase for anyone who can't get their head about the way that iTunes works, or just wants more flexibility when using their iPod.