UPDATE: Media Monkey has launched a beta version of their program that purports to correct the problem addressed in this article. I'll be posting a review soon.
I've been a huge fan of MediaMonkey - in fact, last year I purchased a "lifetime license". At this point, however, it seems like that lifetime of use is on life support. The latest problem came up this morning when I was prompted by the program to download the latest version. I was promised many improvements and fixes...What I got was a media player that wouldn't even start.
Frankly, I haven't used MediaMonkey much since it wiped out my new iPhone the first time I tried to sync it up on July 23. At that time MediaMonkey's home page vaunted its ability to sync to the iPhone.even though they acknowledged the fact that syncing the new iPhones could wipe them out on on July 17, 2008. Yes, a week later, Mediamonkey was still advertising iPhone compatibility as one of its most important features.
The iPhone incompatibility appears to be a problem vexxing nearly all 3rd party music managers and is tied to Apple having changed the way its data is stored. True, there are workarounds. I was able to restore my iPhone, so it wasn't a complete brick. Still, I would like that hour back while I worried that I had killed my newly minted favorite gadget.
Likewise, today, all I wanted to do was turn on some tunes. That was when MediaMonkey convinced me to upgrade. I just wanted to listen to some music while I was programming. "C'mon monkey," the program chided, you don't want to have an out of date, vulnerable system. Do you, monkey?"
So I hit the button. I downloaded the software and restarted MediaMonkey. Up came the splash screen and then nothing. It just sat there. "Unresponsive," opined Task Manager.
Again, MediaMonkey had me studying its tech forums instead of playing music. After sifting through a number of forums and faqs, I found something that suggested that the culprit was a bad .dll file - linked, at least by name, to the iPhone problems that have plagued MediaMonkey for months.
By renaming the file C:\Program Files\MediaMonkey\Plugins\d_iPhone.dll to off.d_phone.dll, MediaMonkey "worked" again. Of course, it "worked" without my iPhone.
Both MediaMonkey and Apple bear some blame here. MediaMonkey needs to be more proactive in its testing and disclosure of problems to consumers.
Apple's approach to the third party community is equally hostile and anti-consumer. I can think of no justfiable reason to prohibit consumers from using whatever software they desire on the iPhone. MediaMonkey is substantially more powerful than iTunes, particularly when it comes to classical music. Apple should publish the API so that third parties can give consumers a choice of software. Locking the iPhone down is not the way to get me to switch.
