Download Squad

Apple's iPod platform has such a commanding lead in the digital music player battle that it's not even funny. Some find this fact astounding, given some of the limitations Apple puts on the iPod / iTunes platform. The biggest limitation people run into is the fact that although you can synchronize your music from iTunes onto your iPod, there is no ability to move music in the other direction.

Clearly this is a limitation to appease the music industry. But there are many legitimate reasons that a user might want to use an iPod to move a music collection from one instance of iTunes to another.

Luckily, for those users, a number of solutions exist. Two of our current favorites include PodWorks, and the cleverly named Senuti.

PodWorks is the widely agreed-upon king in this genre of software, garnering accolades from the likes of Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal. At $8, it is very reasonably priced, and works exactly as advertised.

For those that would prefer to use freeware for the same purpose, there is the free as in beer Senuti. Senuti's tagline is "everything in reverse", which is appropriate. You'll probably also notice that its name is "iTunes" spelled backwards.

We didn't run into any difficulties with either application, so choosing between them is probably simply a matter of taste. Which appeals to you?