I have a problem with some of the iLife apps that ship with OS X on Macs. I must first mention that they're great apps compared to the competition. iTunes is vastly superior to Windows Media Player, iMovie and Windows movie maker can't even be compared on the same plain, and Windows doesn't even ship with something like iPhoto or Garage Band.

My main complaint is the database-driven nature of iTunes and iPhoto. By default, when you import new media, the program creates a copy of the file in it's own little directory somewhere. So you effectively have two copies of the same file on your hard drive. One in the lame iTunes directory, and one wherever you decided to put it. This can result in duplicates in iTunes if you don't maintain the delicate balance it tries to keep.

You can, however turn this behavior off. Basically untick both these options.

iTunes still keeps your music listed in a database, and doesn't show you the contents of your directories directly, so you're still going to have to do some upkeep on your library and you'll still get duplicates and broken links when you move files around. Lame.

The other thing that is confusing is adding new music to your library. There are basically a bunch of ways of doing this, apparently. You can simply open an audio file with iTunes and it will be added, you can click and drag files onto the iTunes icon or into the iTunes window, or you can add song manually through the menu.

Yea, just click there on "import..." and you're ready to go. Wait, on second thought, click "add to library..." - wait, which is it?

The options there are confusing to users who don't know the different between adding to library and importing. It could be simpler.

My next complaint with iTunes is the interface. I grew up with winamp, and am firmly within their design school of thought. A full winamp setup will take up 20% of the width of your screen, with a playlist window that can be moved or adjusted to show as much as you want. When you want things small and out of the way, you can double click the top bar and the whole thing turns into a super-mini media player that you can hide easily in some corner of your screen.

iTunes, by contrast, is a big ugly window where you either get all or nothing. You either have to look at a full wide playlist and list of files along with the media controls and other crap or you can go into mini mode and just have the media controls.

But the controls, and remember that media control is what this is supposed to be about, suck in both the full sized and mini version. The little bar to drag around where in the song you are playing is to small to be useful, and you just don't get many options or any way to see a playlist and find a song you want to listen to.

It's right crap.

There are free alternatives, of course. Here are a few along with a short review. This is by no means comprehensive.

VLC - Very good barebones media player. It reminds me the most of hoe I had winamp arranged - media controls at the top, playlist below and thin. I don't need my media player to take up my entire desktop. VLC is better for movies than it is for music, but it does support playlists and I like how it keeps everything organized like I have it organized in my file system.

Songbird - Songbird is billed as a multi-platform iTunes replacement. Although I think it has a better look than iTunes, it still maintains the "take-up-your-window" mentality. There was talk of skinning support a while back, but I haven't seen any more on it. Pretty decent player, but nothing to write home about. Songbird also supports plugins which is cool. I think they're trying to be the Firefox of media players.

macamp lite x - This is a winamp clone for osx. Good little control bar and some decent features. No longer supported. It is a PowerPC app, so it runs in rosetta on newer macs. Good effort but not enough to hook me.

Audion - Audio is a media player by my favorite mac developer, panic. It is an old project and doesn't show the same quality as their newer apps, but it's a decent media player nonetheless. It features media editing capabilities which is pretty handy. It also supports skins, making it probably the closest thing to winamp for mac. This player is in my #1 spot to take over my iTunes.

Winamp - I mention winamp because you can actually run it in OS X using crossover. Since this is not a free solution I will say no more.

If you want to stay with iTunes, I will mention one more piece of software that you should check out. You control: tunes is probably the best app for iTunes since sliced bread. You can keep iTunes hidden (cmd+h) and let you control manage everything right from your menu bar. I've been using it for a few days and it's great. Highly customizable, handy, and gets rid of the annoying iTunes interface. Everything is accessible from right there in your menu bar.

I am usually a menu bar minimalist as I equate it to the "tray" in windows which can quickly fill up with useless and annoying apps and take up space. I think you control is worth it though, and you can actually define how much space it takes up and how it presents itself. If you want you can stick all or part of the control behind a drop down menu. If I stick with iTunes, it will be because of this app.