Senuti - GPL version

Plenty of people have been in this situation- you've just lost files on your Mac for some reason. It could be due to a dead hard drive or accidental deletion; it doesn't matter why. But, there's that sinking feeling of vulnerability when you realize there's music that is only on your iPod now that you'd like to restore to your computer. (MacBook owners with Time Capsules, or iMac and/or Mac Mini owners with large external hard drives who are configured for Time Machine won't be in this bind.)

For songs purchased in the iTunes Music Store, this is no problem, iTunes will restore these for you. But for songs that you ripped from a CD, or downloaded from another online music store, then you need another method of restoring them from your iPod to your computer. Senuti does this beautifully and it used to be free (as much of it is GPL code) and they asked for donations. Now, they want $18 for it. Which is not unreasonable, but fortunately, there's still a free version available.

The last time I used the free version with Snow Leopard and iTunes 9, it still worked perfectly.

[Site]
[Download]