Interface Rating:

Like the other two apps, GimmeSomeTune consists of a floater and a preference window. Instead of living in System Preferences, however, GimmeSomeTune’s prefs are accessed from a menu bar item.

One difference in this application is that you have some degree of customizability over the floater, including font face, size, weight, and opacity of the overall window. One quirk, however, was that it wouldn’t let me set the play/pause shortcut to ctrl+space, claiming it was already used as a system wide shortcut.

Some additional feature unique to GimmeSomeTune include the ability to update iChat status based on your current music as well as support for last.fm.

Functionality Rating:

This app offers much of the same functionality as the other two applications, including toggling the shuffle mode. It also adds the ability to automatically fetch album artwork and lyrics for songs that don’t have any. Since most of my songs already have artwork, I can’t fully speak to this feature, but the lyrics fetching seems to work pretty well most of the time. You can also display the lyrics to the current song with a keyboard shortcut if you want.

Overall, this app would earn a 5 star rating in this area except that it would occasionally hang up and crash. I’m not sure exactly what the problem was, but I definitely think the app is still worth a look for the extra features.

Value Rating:

Although still donationware, you can download an unlimited version for free. If you find the app to be useful, I recommend that you donate, however.

Overall Overall Rating:

Ultimately, this is a decent app with a few more features than the other iTunes controllers we have reviewed. We recommend that you check out each of them before making a decision as each has a slightly different feature set.

Both allow you to advance and go back tracks, play/pause, set rating, adjust volume, and more through keyboard shortcuts that function even when iTunes isn’t the active application. (Disclaimer: The free version of SizzlingKeys was reviewed, and Synergy was obtained for free through the Giving Tree.)

Interface

SizzlingKeys Rating:

Synergy Rating:

Both of these apps actually offer similar interfaces. Both are controlled through a preference pane, and display a floating informational panel when you change tracks or play/pause.

Synergy also offers support for Growl notifications and a menubar item with forward, reverse, play, and pause buttons. Both also allow users to customize the hotkeys that control playback. I’ve found ctrl+space to be the best shortcut for play/pause and opt+cmd+left/right arw good for track advances. Overall, both these apps provide a similar user interfaces that are well layed out and intuitive.

Here we see Synergy’s informational and preference panes. (Synergy uses centered panels to show playback information that are similar to the ones OS X uses for adjusting volume.)

Functionality

SizzlingKeys Rating: Synergy Rating: Both of these apps are great at what they do. They consistently control iTunes via keyboard shortcuts without hogging resources. SizzlingKeys also offers some extra keyboard shortcuts including: Put computer to sleep, Lock computer, Activate screensaver, and Put display to sleep (the last one is OS X 10.4 only). The Pro version of SizzlingKeys allows you to toggle the shuffle and repeat modes, skip forward and backward by definable amounts of time within a track, and adjust the system volume (instead of just iTunes’ volume). Toggling of playback modes is also found in Synergy.

Value

SizzlingKeys Rating: Synergy Rating:
You can’t beat a wellmade free app, and that’s exactly what SizzlingKeys offers. The only  case where plunking down money on Synergy is justified is if you really want Growl notifications, which are kind of redundant given the floater both of these apps provide. Even if you want to have control over playback modes, SizzlingKeys Pro is the better deal. Note that Synergy is still available for free from the Giving Tree, so if you want to try it out you  can without spending any money.

Overall

SizzlingKeys Rating: Synergy Rating:
Ultimately, this comparison comes down to two very similar apps, one of which happens to be free. MARS’s recommendation is to download both (while Synergy is free) and see which one you like better. Otherwise, SizzlingKeys offers the most bang for the buck.