I've been using XPlay to listen to music on my Mac-formatted iPod through my PC since the early beta versions. Over that time, I've had an interesting love/hate relationship with the product.
I love XPlay when it works:
- My iPod mounts flawlessly and I can play all MP3's via WMP.
- I've used Xplay with Win98, Win2K and WinXP, all with good results.
- The speed of the app has improved dramatically over time.
There are also soem bad things that people should be aware of:
- Every time Apple updates the iPod firmware, Xplay breaks.
- When Apple updates iTunes, Xplay breaks ~ 50% of the time.
- It typically takes anywhere from 1 to 5 days for MediaFour to update Xplay after such a change.
- XPlay doesn't add the capability to play any file that WMP couldn't play by itself. Ergo, you can't listen to Protected-AAC files through your PC.
- Once version 2.0 of Xplay was released, support for version 1 was killed immediately. Since Apple issued an iPod firmware update less than 2 months after Xplay 2.0 came out, many people who bought version 1 less than 6 months ago are being forced to buy a $15 upgrade to version 2.0. Not even Microsoft is this brutal.