iTunes Companion

Scrolling through desktop pictures on flickr, I noticed one with a jewel case displaying iTunes artwork. I thought it would be a cool little freeware app I could download, so I checked it out. It turned out to be a program called CoverSutra. While the program does have a few cool features like info bezels, last.fm integration, and apple remote support, there’s a major drawback: it costs €14.95(about $27.75). Comparing it to programs like Transmit, that cost $29.00, Coversutra is just a pretty iTunes remote. I wouldn’t be gaining any function from it, just a nice little jewel case on my desktop. Needless to say, I gave up on my jewel-cased desktop. That is until I found iTunes Companion. iTunes Companion is a Yahoo! Widget(formerly Konfabulator). It’s free and does exactly what I want. It displays my iTunes artwork in it’s own separate jewel case styled window, and can control iTunes. It can also download artwork from Amazon. Best of all, it’s free! It can take 1-2 seconds to change the artwork when the track changes, which doesn’t sound like long, but can be frusterating. So far though, that’s the only downside I’ve found. If you’d like to see what my desktop looks like with iTunes Companion running, you can check my flickr.