TuneRanger

TuneRanger is an iTunes synchronization tool for Windows and Mac OS X. iTunes is either extremely hated or loved by computer users worldwide. Those of us who love it, know how much of a hassle it is to keep more than one instance of iTunes synced. And when you add more than one iPod or iPhone to the mix, things get far more complicated.

TuneRanger is a valiant effort towards making this problem disappear. It automatically detects your local playlist and if you have a device connected, it detects its playlist. Furthermore, if you have another instance of iTunes running on another computer on the network, you can sync those two. There are several ways in which TuneRanger syncs your files. You can either copy your local playlist to a remote device or playlist, or the other way around. You can also merge playlists and carry out identical copies. This application has several filtering and syncing options, so it shouldn't be hard to configure this to match your preferences. The graphical user interface is similar to that of iTunes. It also has several tools that allow you to copy files directly to your iPods (without syncing) and to remove duplicates. Basically, TuneRanger can tackle all those syncing needs and make perhaps the only flaw I find in iTunes a lot more bearable. For 30 bucks, though, I think I like iTunes just the way it is.