With the recent release of iTunes 10.5, you can store your music and TV purchases in iCloud and get them on your iPad, iPhone or iPod any where and anytime. However, its speed and performance still hasn’t been updated in any meaningful way so that many Apple devices fans think it as a clunky, slow and bloat software and try to search for alternative ways to manage their Apple devices content easier.
This passage rounds up Five free alternatives to iTunes for easily managing your iPad, iPhone and iPod:

Alternative 1: CopyTrans Manager

CopyTrans Manager is a free iTunes replacement to fully support the iPad, the iPhone and the iTouch.It is designed for Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7 and portable so that you don’t need to install any program and just take it with you on your iPad, iPhone, iTouch to use on any PC on-the-go.

CopyTrans Manager works with a range of models:
iPhone, 3G, 3GS, 4 and 4S up to iOS 5
iPod Touch, 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G up to iOS 5
iPad 1 and 2 up to iOS 5
iPod Nano up to iPod Nano 5G
iPod Classic, iPod Video and iPod Photo
iPod Shuffle up to iPod Shuffle 4G
iPod Mini
Now reads Mac formatted iPods (HFS+)

Alternative 2: YamiPod

YamiPod is a iTunes alternative freeware for you to efficiently manage your iPod. It can be run directly from your iPod and needs no installation in Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. YamiPod is now available in 28 languages including English, French, German, Italian and so on. With YamiPod, you can copy music to iPod and move music from iPod back to your computer.

Alternative 3: gtkpod iPod Manager

gtkpod iPod Manager is a free iTunes replacement for Linux users, which supports all iPod models and supports various file types. With gtkpod, you can add MP3, WAV, M4A (non-protected AAC), M4B (audio book), podcasts, and various video files (single files, directories or existing playlists) to your iPod and create, modify playlists. gtkpod has the ability to modify ID3 tags and refresh ID3 tags from file.

Alternative 4: Songbird

As iTunes alternative software, Songbird is a intergration of desktop Web player, a digital jukebox and Web browser. it supports add-ons and skins feathers, for example, with Last.fm Radio Add-on, you can listen to tracks based on your Songbird, scrobble your last.fm labrary, or tune in to your friend’s favorite songs. And Songbird is a cross-platform and open source software. Some of the most popular handsets in the world are fully supported by Songbird like Samsung Captivate, Epic 4G, Vibrant, Fascinate and Samsung Galaxy Tab.

Alternative 5: Winamp

With Winamp, you can listen, watch and manage music, video, podcasts and internet radio on your desktop and devices. Winamp is for people who like to customize, tinker and tweak: offering the widest range of extensions, skins, and services to add to your experience. And Winamp allows you to significantly customize your experience with over 6,000 add-ons (skins, plug-ins, online services and visualizations) created by a loyal development community. The Winamp Media Player is used worldwide and comes available in 16 different languages.

Author Bio : Conielben is a blogger who works for Software Review which is a technology blog.

Tired of tethering to iTunes and wondering how to get Wi-Fi sync set up on Windows? Luckily with iTunes 10.5 and iOS 5 it’s easy to get the Zune guys to stop teasing you. Here’s how:

• Make sure your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch is connected to your Wi-Fi network and running iOS 5. (Here’s how to update to iOS 5)

• Make sure the PC running iTunes is connected to the same Wi-Fi network and is running iTunes version 10.5

• Plug in the device you want to setup Wi-Fi sync with
• When its been recognized, click on it in the left column then select Summary in the header bar

• Scroll down until you see the option for Sync with this iPhone over Wi-Fi

• Click the box to turn it on
• Hit Apply

That’s it, now as long as iTunes is open on your PC, as soon as you plug your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad into the power outlet, it should appear in iTunes and sync over Wi-Fi. (Yes — It has to be plugged in to the power for this to work, so you are really just cutting the cord to the PC not to the wall!)
If you want to initiate a sync manually, you can do this from your iOS device and you don’t need to be plugged into a power outlet.

• Go to Settings
• General

• Click on iTunes Wi-Fi Sync
• Click on Sync Now

That is all there is too it, you can now sync your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad without the cable. Well without a cable connected to your PC anyway!

Wondering how to setup iOS 5′s new iMessage service on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch? Using iMessage you can send text messages, photos, video and much more to other iMessage users around the world, all over your existing data connection. That’s right, no texting plans or charges needed! Here’s how to get started.

Let’s take a look at the iPhone first

• First off ensure your running the latest iOS 5 software
• Select settings
• Select Messages
• Turn the toggle switch for iMessage to on

• You should see a message saying “Activating”
• You can now enter your receive to addresses, this can be an email address (Apple ID) or just your iPhone phone number, or both. The phone number part should already be filled out
• If you have an Apple ID and want to use that as well as your phone number, enter it here

• Once completed you will now have an active iMessage account on your iPhone
• You can toggle various options on and off such as read recipts etc
• Also you have an option to send as an SMS if iMessage data connection is not available

That is all you need, you now have iMessage set up on your iPhone!  

Now for the iPad and iPod touch

Setting up iMessage on the iPad and iPod touch is slightly diferent as these devices do not have any telephone number associated with them.

• First off ensure your running the latest iOS 5 software
• Select settings
• Select Messages
• Turn the toggle switch for iMessage to on
• A new box will open asking you for an Apple ID

• If you have an Apple ID, enter it here
• If you don’t have one, select Create New Account
• Once completed you will now have an active iMessage account on your iPad or iPod touch

Ok now we have iMessage set up there are a few things to consider. If you only have one device then you are fine. If you have multiple iOS 5 devices then you will need to think about how you want them to work. Do you want separate iMessage accounts for each device? More than likely, you would want one account that stays in sync across all of your devices. If you want separate iMessage accounts for each device, you will need to create separate Apple ID’s for each device, these can be created for free in the iMessage original set up screen. Just select Create New Account.
If you want to have all devices use one iMessage account then you need to input the same Apple ID details into each device iMessage setup page.
That should be all you need to get started with iMessage!

Curious about how to remove the photos that iCloud stores in your Photo Stream? Maybe you have a few controversial pictures you need to clear out of the stream before letting a friend use your iPhone or iPad?
With iOS 5 and iCloud, Apple introduced Photo Stream to keep your photos synced between devices. By default, photos are automatically deleted after 30 days or after you cross the 1,000 photo threshold, but what if you need to manually remove them? We’ll show you how after the jump!

Getting Started

To get started, you’ll need to navigate to iCloud.com from the desktop in order to access advanced iCloud preferences. Once you’re there, just follow these quick steps to reset Photo Stream and clear out your pictures.

1. Once you’re at iCloud.com on the desktop, click on your name in the upper-right hand corner.
2. From the Account Settings pane, click on ‘Advanced’.
3. Now, click ‘Reset Photo Stream’ to begin the process.
4. Finally, you’ll be asked to confirm before iCloud erases all contents in your Photo Stream.

And that’s it!
I’d run a quick check on your iPad or Mac to make sure all the photos have been fully removed from the Photo Stream before handing over your iDevice to a friend, but this process should do the trick if you’re looking to clear out or reset your Photo Stream contents.

If you’re new to iPhone or iPad and have just gotten started with iOS 5, you might be wondering how to set up the new Twitter integration feature. It gives you the ability to tweet directly from Photos, YouTube, Safari, Maps, and any other third party applications that request access to your twitter settings. It’s also easy to set up. Here’s how.

1. Go to Settings

2. Enter the Twitter Settings
3. Enter your @username and password
4. Select which apps you wish to have access to the twitter settings.
5. Now, you’ll be able to share from Photos, YouTube, Safari, Maps and other third party apps that support the twitter integration.

Bonus: When you’re in Twitter settings, you can install the official twitter app, directly from settings.
Optional: You can merge your twitter friends with your contacts. Twitter uses phone numbers and email addresses to match twitter names with your friends, and adds a link to their profile to their contact.
You’ve now got Twitter set up on your iPhone, allowing you to tweet straight from some of Apple’s native apps, as well as some third party apps. You can also login to select Twitter apps, without having to re-enter your login.

Any idiot can use an iPad at a basic level. It's designed that way. But even still, there are things that you're just supposed to magically know—things no one ever necessarily tells you. So we're here to help.

The Soft Reset

The single most common thing people don't realize about the iPhone OS (from my experience) is how to perform a soft reset—which you'll find extremely useful in cases when the system freezes.
Just hold the top (power) and bottom front (home) button for a few seconds. Your iPad will restart. To force quit an application, just hold the home button by itself in a similar fashion.

Cut, Copy and Paste for Experts

Copying text is as easy as double tapping a word. But when you want to copy a whole paragraph, like for an address, you have to stretch those annoying little blue knobs...or do you?
Tap any editable text four times. You'll highlight the whole paragraph.

Import Your Own (Free) Books

Apple's iBooks app is your portal to reading and buying eBooks on the iPad—and it includes a section with a few free books. But don't forget, just like iTunes and the iPod can import and play music downloaded elsewhere, the iTunes and the iPad can import and display books downloaded elsewhere. Formats are limited, however. The iPad only supports ePub (with or without DRM).
Your local library may be a great source for free ePub checkouts. Also, Project Gutenberg has 30,000 free ePub books you can download, all of which have fallen out of copyright. There's lots of good stuff in this collection if you read classics, and the project even has an RSS list for new arrivals.
If you want to convert PDFs and other DRM-free formats to ePub, you can use Calibre.

Easy Mute

There you are, in the back row of a funeral just minding your own business when, oops, you forgot to mute those YouTube clips on your iPad! No worries. There's a quick way to cut the speaker.
Holding down the volume down button for about two seconds will mute your iPad.

Never Buy a Digital Photo Frame Again

You probably know by now that the iPad doubles as a digital picture frame. You can access this function a few ways, but the easiest way?
When you wake the iPad, look to the right of Slide to Unlock. You'll see a flower. Click it. The slideshow will begin after a moment. Toggle the speed in Settings—oh, and while you're at it, turn off "zoom in on faces"—it tends to just grain/muck up your photos.

Take Giant Screenshots

Another oldie but goody that many that many people don't realize you can do in the iPhone OS: screenshot anything you're looking at. And keep in mind, when this happens on the iPad, it's at 768x1024 resolution—making it potentially a lot more useful in the full-sized monitor realm than iPhone screenshots.
Push the top (power) and home buttons at once for half a second. The photo will be stored in your photo library.

Super Fast Webpage Scrolling

So you're all the way to the bottom of a blog when you realize that you want to read a story back at the top. Don't do the whole repeatedly drag your finger across the screen thing. That's a horrible method for covering a lot of real estate. Instead:
Tap the title bar once. WOOOOSSHHH. You're right back on top of the page. (Making "wooosh" noises doesn't expedite the process, but it does wonders for general effect.)

Preview More Of Your Mail

Did you know that you can set your mail to preview more than two lines? The iPhone has this option, too, but its smaller screen means that it's not so practical. On the iPad, however, I find the feature is pretty handy for skimming several emails without opening them.
Go to Settings -> Mail, Contacts and Calendars and select "5 lines" under Preview. Also, while you're at it, you might want to update your Push email from "Manual" if you like to have your messages waiting when you open the Mail app. Of course, this will drain power a bit more quickly.

Bring Up the Virtual Keyboard With a Real Keyboard

When you have a Bluetooth keyboard connected to your iPad, the virtual keyboard will cease to appear. (This is a good thing.) However, what if, for some random reason, you needed that virtual keyboard? Don't unpair your Bluetooth. Just...
Hit the eject key on Apple's physical keyboard. It'll bring up the virtual one.

Downrez 1080P HD Videos...Or You Can't Watch Them

You may have 1080P videos on your computer, but the iPad can't play them—in fact, iTunes won't even let you copy them to the iPad! The easiest solution? Downrez them to 720P using an app like Handbrake.
Joel gives you a full tutorial on that here. You can also stream music and videos to the iPad with StreamToMe.

#11 BONUS: Put 6 Apps In the Bottom Tray

Just discovered at Gizmodo HQ—the iPhone and iPad default to hold 4 icons/apps in the bottom tray. But the iPad can store more!
By clicking and holding on any icon (just as you do to rearrange apps), you'll unlock each app's position. Then just drag any two additional apps into the bottom tray. Super handy.

1. Hidden apostrophe key on the keyboard
This is a great tip for any app, such as Notes, Pages or Mail, that you type into using the iPad's virtual keyboard. Rather than having to go to the second screen of the keyboard every time you want to type an apostrophe (which is a real pain) just tap and hold on the ! key and a hidden apostrophe option will appear - then just slide your finger up to access it.

2. Quick quotes
You don't have to move the iPad's second keyboard screen to enter a quotation mark either. Simply tap and hold over the ? key and a quotation symbol appears, which you can select by moving your finger upwards.

3. Add a full stop
Another great keyboard tip for typing in apps such as Pages, Notes or Mail is to doubletap the space bar at the end of a sentence. This adds a full stop and a space for you, which can be enormously time-saving when you're writing long articles.

4. Dim your iBooks
You can lower the brightness setting down to a low level using the Brightness option under Settings. But the iBooks app has its own brightness slider, which you can use to lower the level down more conveniently.

5. Change days
There's no way to swipe to change between days in the Calendar app, but don't forget the navigation bar along the bottom of the screen - this can be used to switch to different days (or weeks/months, depending on the view you've chosen). The current day is always shown in blue, or you can just tap the Today button to return to the current day.

6. Street View in Maps
The Maps app running Google's Street View is one of the coolest features of the iPad, yet accessing it is so confusing few people even know it's there. To access Street View you need to have dropped a red pin on the map (which happens when you do a search). You then tap the red and white icon of a person to enter Street View.

7. Directions in Maps
There's no free sat nav for the iPad, but directions in Maps are a substitute if you're walking, driving or taking the bus. Just tap Directions on the top left of Maps and the iPad even works out where you are right now, then takes you step-by-step through each stage of your journey.

8. Display PDFs
There are two ways to display PDFs on your iPad: you can either email them to your iPad, in which case you get an Open in iBooks button appear, or you can sync PDFs from your Mac or PC via the Books tab in iTunes.
To do this just drag and drop the PDF into iTunes, then when you sync your iPad click on the Books tab and select the PDFs you'd like to sync. In iBooks you click on PDFs in your library to see the PDFs you have ready to display.

9. Camera focus and meter
In the Camera app, tap on your subject to both focus on and meter the light properly. In this shot, notice how the chair is dark and the boy outside is properly metered. You can reverse that by simply tapping on the chair.

10. Get a grip
You'll probably hold the iPad by its sides, but it'll rotate to put the shutter button at the bottom, making you wobble when you reach for it. So use the orientation lock to put the shutter where you can easily thumb it, then just rotate your images or videos afterward in an image editor.

11. Take charge in FaceTime
Once you've started a video call, you can move the picture-in-picture window that shows you by simply dragging it around with your finger.

12. Photo Booth fun
Sure, you're great, but Photo Booth is even more fun if you point it at friends or family. Simply tap the 'twirly camera' icon in the bottom right. to use the camera on the back You can also snap stills by hitting the shutter button, but Photo Booth doesn't do video.

13. Download photos straight from your camera to your iPad
You can't plug an SD card from a digital camera straight into your iPad to view the photos, but you can purchase the iPad Camera Connection kit from Apple. With this device attached you can transfer photos straight from your camera's memory card. Get it from the Apple Store online.
14. Quicker websites
Save time typing web addresses in Safari by using the iPad's ".com" key when typing in a URL. A little-known timesaver is that if you hold down the .com key you get access to a menu that offers a .co.uk and other options too.

15. Quick Safari scroll
You can jump up to the top of any web site - indeed any list - by tapping on the top of the title window. It's much faster than scrolling by hand.

16. Zoom in on websites
You can zoom in on any website by pinching out with two fingers on the screen. This also makes it easier to select words and tap links. To zoom out again, just pinch in with two fingers. Double-tap on any text or image to auto-zoom so it fills the screen.

17. Turn on Bookmarks bar in Safari
We all know you can tap the bookmarks icon in the Safari toolbar to access your bookmarks, but you can significantly cut down the number of taps it takes to get to them by turning on your Safari Bookmarks Bar permanently. In the Settings app, tap Safari, then turn Always Show Bookmarks Bar to ON.

18. Clear browsing history in Safari
Need to cover your tracks online? You can delete your Safari browser history in a flash. Just open the Settings app, then tap Safari and tap on Clear History. Note you can also wipe your Cookies and clear your Cache here too.

19. Open Safari links in a new page
You can open links in a new Safari window, rather than always opening them in the current one. Just tap and hold on the link and a pop-over menu appears giving you the option to open the link in a new page.

20. Find text on a page
You can search for a particular word on an open page in Safari. Type your word into the Google search box. You'll see a list of suggestions appear, and near the bottom you'll see "On This Page", showing how many times that word appears on the page. Tap the Find option to go to the first instance of the word.

21. Turn off iPad email alert chimes
You can turn off the chime for new emails. Go to Settings, then General, then Sounds and turn off the New Mail sound. You can also adjust sound levels here.

22. Preview more of your emails
The iPad's Mail app defaults to previewing two lines of each email before you tap on it. Sometimes however it would be handier to be able to see more of an email before loading the whole thing in, especially if you are on a slow connection. To do this open the Settings app, then tap on Mail, Contacts, Calendars and change the Preview options to add more lines.

23. Turn off iPad push mail
Most mail accounts default to Push as a delivery mechanism, if available. This automatically 'pushes' any new emails your way as soon as they are available. If you find this annoying or distracting you can set your Mail accounts to check for new messages at intervals, or manually so they only check for new messages when you tap the Refresh button. To turn off Push, select the Settings app and Mail, Contacts, Calendars and choose Fetch New Data, then turn Push on or off.

24. Make an iPad backup
If you want to make sure your iPad's data is properly backed up then you can force iTunes to back it up. When you're conencted to your Mac or PC, open up iTunes and right-click on your iPad in the Devices list and select Back up.

25. iPad is flat and won't charge
If your iPad battery is completely flat then it can take a while for the red battery symbol to appear when you plug it in to charge, indicating that it is charging. Don't panic, just leave it plugged in and wait - the charging symbol will appear eventually.

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