Stuck like this

This is not a ninja screenshot taken as the minimize animation was happening. Photoshop was actually stuck like this. The most amusing part was I could still actually make changes to the document (edit text, move layers, etc).  I have no idea what occurred to make this happen, but I can be confident that Apple cultists will insist it’s anyone’s fault but Apple’s.

I hope this doesn’t come as a shocker to anyone, but iTunes on Windows is terrible. It’s slow, always running something in the background, calling home to Apple all the time, backing things up when you don’t want it to, destroying all your music with Apple DRM, etc  In short, it mucks up a completely fine Windows system (whether intentional or not on Apple’s part, idk). A few years back I received a second generation iPod Touch for christmas, and since then have been gritting my teeth and suffering through iTunes, because I could never quite get it to sync right with anything else.

However, a few weeks back I built a new home pc, complete with a fresh installation of Windows 7, and decided that I would NOT muck up my pristine, new system with iTunes. I still wanted to be able to sync my iPod Touch, though. I looked at Songbird, a free, nice-looking alternative, however it currently does not have the podcast support I’d like  MediaMonkey, however, has excellent podcast support, and syncs with a myriad of devices, iPods included. I wish I could say that I just installed MediaMonkey, plugged in my iPod, and it worked, but why would Apple make it that easy? Instead, I spent hours with Google searches and scouring forums just to get the damn thing to sync. By the end I was victorious, but it seemed like a lot of work for such a simple task, and nowhere online could I find a single, comprehensive guide to what is required. So I figured it might be useful for some people if I posted what I did here.

But I hate it when bloggers just ramble on and on forever before getting to the real meat of the post, so here it goes:

Syncing a second generation iPod Touch in Windows with MediaMonkey
This will probably work for other generation iPod Touches or iPhones, I just don’t have the hardware to test it.

1. Download and install MediaMonkey (http://www.mediamonkey.com/). As long as the MediaMonkey version you’re running is 3.2.x or higher, this should work.
2. Even though this is a guide on syncing an iPod without installing iTunes, unfortunately there are still some components from iTunes that need to be installed. The good news is, you can install these pieces without installing the whole, bloated shebang:
   • Download the iTunes installer for your system (I used the 64 bit version, but either should work).
   • Rename the file you downloaded, iTunesSetup.exe, to iTunesSetup.msi
   • Install 7-Zip if you don’t have it already (a great archive utility for Windows), and right click on iTunesSetup.msi. Navigate to the 7-Zip contextual menu, then choose “Open archive”
   • Now, in the 7-Zip window, double click the .rsrc directory.  You should see a bunch more .msi packages. The only two you need to sync your iPod are “AppleApplicationSupport.msi” and “AppleMobileDeviceSupport64.msi”. Drag these two installers to your desktop, exit 7-Zip, and delete the iTunesSetup.msi as quickly as possible (lest it tempts you).
   • Now install both AppleApplicationSupport.msi and AppleMobileDeviceSupport64.msi.
   • (Alternatively, instead of doing this, you could just install iTunes and never run it, but I wanted as little Apple software on my system as possible.)
3. You’ll also need QuickTime, but there is a handy alternative version that doesn’t bog down your system: QT Lite.  Download and install.

At this point, if you haven’t upgraded to Apple’s new iOS 4 firmware, you should be good to go. Unfortunately, MediaMonkey does not currently support iOS 4, though they are working on it. I had upgraded to iOS 4, thus I had to downgrade my iPod Touch to the 3.0 version of the firmware. This proved to be the biggest headache in the whole process.

4. To downgrade your iPod’s firmware, first you need to acquire the firmware package for your device. There is a good selection of firmware for different iPod devices at: http://www.felixbruns.de/iPod/firmware/ Download the 3.0 version or lower.
5. Downgrading your firmware can be kind of tricky, because as far as I can tell, the only way to do it is through iTunes. I used a system that I didn’t mind installing iTunes on, my laptop. Thus, the following steps were not performed on the computer I had installed MediaMonkey (and the other pieces) on.
6. BUT WAIT!  Before you try the downgrade, you have to edit your hosts file! Apple has now made it so every time iTunes attempts an “iPod Restore,” it calls home to Apple headquarters to confirm that Steve Jobs is ok with what you’re doing. And Steve is not ok with downgrades.
   • Luckily, an awesome guy who goes by saurik has created a way around this. Editing your hosts file is basically a way of tricking your computer into going to a different internet address than the one its intending to go to. saurik has set up a server that mimics Apple’s authentication server, but without all the draconian restrictions.
   • The hosts file is located at: “C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts”.  If you copy that path and paste it into the search box in the Windows Start menu, Windows will probably bring up a dialog asking you what program you want to use to open the file. Pick either Notepad or Wordpad.
   • At the bottom of the hosts file, add the text “74.208.10.249 gs.apple.com”. Save and close.  (You will probably need administrator permissions on the system to make this edit.)
7. You’re now ready to flash the iPod’s firmware. The iPod touch has 2 kinds of recovery modes (a fact that Apple does not document very well). There’s the common recovery mode, where the screen has a USB cable pointing to an iTunes logo, and the Device Firmware Update (DFU) mode, where the screen is just black. The downgrade has to be done in DFU mode.
   • First, plug the iPod Touch into the system with iTunes. Then, with iTunes running,  hold down the top “lock” button and the “home” button on the iPod’s face. Continue holding both these buttons down until the iPod’s screen goes dark, then release just the top “lock” button. Continue to hold down the home button until you hear the Windows “device has been connected” sound (da-ding). The iPod’s screen should remain black, and iTunes will pop up a dialog saying “You must restore before it can be used blah blah blah.”  The iPod is now in DFU mode.
   • Click “OK” to close the iTunes popup. Hold down Shift, and click the Restore button in iTunes. Holding down Shift will allow you to pick your own firmware package to restore to, instead of iTunes going out and finding the latest one from Apple. Navigate to the 3.0 firmware downloaded previously, and click Restore.
   • It’ll take a while to do a restore.
8. Success! If nothing went wrong, you should be good to go at this point. Go back you your iTunes-less system with MediaMonkey and plug in your iPod. MediaMonkey should now be able to recognize and sync with your iPod Touch, without iTunes and all its background processes mucking up the works.

While MediaMonkey is a great alternative for syncing songs, audiobooks, and podcasts, it unfortunately has no support for apps or videos. However, in my opinion, it is a concession worth making. You can always download apps and video podcasts directly to the iPod through its wifi connection.

I hope some find this guide useful (and legible). As stated previously, all the information here can be found elsewhere on the net, but not, as far as I can tell, all in one place. Thanks go out to the MediaMonkey Wiki, Felix Bruns, saurik, and various other forum posters for providing the resources to make this possible.