iTunes on the Desktop: Oh The Things We Can Do

Over recent years, iTunes has become more and more popular, becoming one of the most used apps on any Mac. Because of this, there are literally thousands of plug-ins and enhancements. Today, I’m going to take you through the best ways to control your music from the desktop. There are many apps for this, but I’m going to focus on two for this review: GimmeSomeTune and CoverSutra.

First off, you can control iTunes from the desktop without third-party software. You can simply use the mini-player, by pressing the green ‘+’ at the top of the window. Although this is a very basic option, iTunes allows you to keep the mini-player on top of all other windows. This enables you to control iTunes, and see what you are listening to, in whatever app you are using.
The downside? No album art, no hot-keys and overall it’s nothing special.

So, onto the others, starting with CoverSutra. It is a polished app, with an easy to use interface. It shows your album art on your desktop inside an “Old-Skool” jewel case, a very nice touch. If you click the case, it will open a translucent window, which allows you to to do everything you can with iTunes. Options for song rating, Shuffle and Repeat are all available. All of the options shown in that window are also available with user-configurable, system wide, hot-keys. You can then have control of iTunes anytime, anywhere in OS X.

Other interesting and useful (for some) features of CoverSutra include Last.fm support and Growl support. Last.fm is a music social network, which you “scrobble” your music to. CoverSutra automatically scrobbles your music to Last.fm, so you can show people what you’re into. The second useful feature is Growl support. Growl is ‘the’ OS X notification system, and CoverSutra sends an announcement to Growl, saying what is about to start playing, and a picture of the album art. Very useful so you can always work out what’s playing wherever you are!

The only real problem, is that this is the only shareware out of the 2 apps. CoverSutra is priced at €14.95 ($20USD); and can be purchased from Sophiestication.

Moving onwards, we get to GimmeSomeTune, which was recently updated to version 3.7. This app is very similar to CoverSutra; however, it is freeware. It’s feature set also differs from that of CoverSutra. GimmeSomeTune lets you control iTunes with simple menu bar buttons. This is really nice, as you can always access the menu bar. It also displays a window in the bottom left hand corner of the screen, either constantly, or when the song changes.

That brings me to why some may prefer GimmeSomeTune over CoverSutra; it is very customisable. Like CoverSutra, You can set when the notification window pops up, but you can also set things such as the color of the window itself. It is great to have so much control over the different aspects of the app.

It’s hot-keys feature is very similar to that of CoverSutra, but it has some other features which aren’t available in CoverSutra. In iChat, GimmeSomeTune will change your display picture to the album artwork, and your status to what is playing. The best feature; however, is the ‘fetching’ GimmeSomeTune will do for you. It can find album art when iTunes hasn’t, and for many people, a debatable feature is Lyric Fetching. GimmeSomeTune will find lyrics for your song, so you can sing along to your hearts content. Overall, It is a good app, with some excellent features. It is available from Eternal Storms Software, and is freeware.

So, what should you do?

If you have a spare $20, then CoverSutra is well worth the money, especially if you’re a Last.fm user. I would recommend CoverSutra over GimmeSomeTune, as it is more rounded, and is generally more aesthetically pleasing, which I think is important for a desktop app. However, if you don’t have the money, then GimmeSomeTune performs just as well. It really comes down to what features you want the app to have. Both are definitely better than what iTunes currently provides, and with the iPhone released this month, we may see iTunes 8, and who knows what that will bring.

(Well, maybe Steve Jobs…)