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A rant about how I finally ditched iTunes... :D

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Dirhael:
I realize it's not that relevant anymore as you have moved away from iTunes, but I found a way to finally get rid of the "ipod" service and not have it starting again ever, and no, just disabling it using services.msc will not work...not will deleting the executable.

What you need to do is deny read/write/execute permissions for the following file:
X:\Program Files\iPod\bin\iPodService.exe

As long as you just deny everyone access to just that file it will work. If you deny access to, or delete, the entire folder, iTunes will try repairing the installation and fail. Disabling the service using services.msc only works until you start iTunes, because it [iTunes] will re-enable it all over again. If probably won't start at boot, but it will start and keep running if you launch iTunes.

I don't use iTunes as a music player (because it does a terrible job at that), but I do buy the occational non-drm release from it so I want to have it installed.

CWuestefeld:
I found a way to finally get rid of the "ipod" service and not have it starting again ever
-Dirhael (November 09, 2007, 10:04 AM)
--- End quote ---
Kudos to you!

I'm in the same boat. I don't actually use iTunes, but I need it for some DRM tracks. Specifically, I buy audiobooks from Audible.com, but these come with DRM, and can't go onto my MP3 player. The first thing I do is run them through Tunebite (http://tunebite.com/en/remove_drm/index.html), which works in concert with iTunes to convert the tracks into MP3 (or ogg or whatever).

So once a month, when I get my monthly Audible fix, I need to fire up iTunes. The other 4 weeks of the month it's just sitting there consuming my computer resources. Remind me again why people love Apple so much?

Grorgy:
Remind me again why people love Apple so much?
--- End quote ---

I think i heard it was the plain cardboard box it comes in, sort of reminiscent of those mail order businesses that would send things in a plain brown wrapper  ;)

Deozaan:
Let me first say that I don't like iTunes or most things that start with a lowercase "i" (especially Apple products), but I never understood the complaint about DRM from iTunes because I could always burn my iTunes DRM music to a CD, then rip the CD as DRM-free MP3s. It's a hassle that shouldn't have to happen, but it's easy to get past.

iTunes itself isn't that bad of software. I don't like how it always runs the iTunesService and iPodHelper, and how I had to resort to "wasting" a CD to get my music in MP3 format (though I've heard you can get DRM free music from iTunes now?). It's the iPod that has had my biggest complaint. I just couldn't understand why people would want to spend $400-$500 on a gimped music player.

Then I remembered high school and status.

Dirhael:
Let me first say that I don't like iTunes or most things that start with a lowercase "i" (especially Apple products), but I never understood the complaint about DRM from iTunes because I could always burn my iTunes DRM music to a CD, then rip the CD as DRM-free MP3s. It's a hassle that shouldn't have to happen, but it's easy to get past.-Deozaan (November 10, 2007, 05:47 PM)
--- End quote ---

Re-encoding from one lossy format to another, and in the case of iTunes, low-bitrate encoding as well is a really bad idea. Yes it will get rid of the DRM, but it also gives you a really lousy sound quality. Even ignoring that problem, I never purcase music or video with DRM if I can avoid it simply because I never will accept the fact that someone (in this case Apple) can decide that I no longer am allowed to play the music I paid for...and yes, this has happened with other systems in the past. One only have to look at Google to see what can happen, even when dealing with these big "trustworthy" companies.

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