nickb
I have been using an IPOD with Media Center for several years and in that time have tried iTunes and Anapod as well. In the end I always come back to Media Center. Before I list the reasons why I come back, I will mention that Media Center does not currently support album art, video, or lyrics on the IPOD...and until recently did not work with the Shuffle (which is why I tried the others in the first place)...though in the past few weeks they have improved the handheld portion of the program and hopefully will have cover art support soon.
Reasons why MC is better (for me):
1. Very Customizable. You can pretty much arrange Media Center anyway you want. The more music you have, the more necessary this becomes. With iTunes you are pretty much forced to view your library in one way.
2. More features. I have used it for several years and continually find cool stuff that I never saw before.
3. More powerful smartlist functions. If you can think of a smartlist, there is probably a way to create it in Media Center if you are creative. You can create your own database fields in MC and the more you use them, the more uses you find for them.
4. Library Browser. I am not sure how many people use this, but I love it. I sort it by date imported and have it be the first screen that MC comes to when it opens. I then look for the album I am in the mood to listen to and the press play.
5. There are a ton of 3rd party plug-ins for MC that improve the overall experience like "Playing Now" and a lot of King Sparta's plug-ins.
6. The MC forum is great. If you have a question there is generally another user that can answer it. If you have a problem, one of the developers will actually look into it.
I am sure that I could think of more advantages to MC but I wanted to just list the things that affect my use of MC and the IPOD. As an overal media program, iTunes and Anapod do not even compare.
General drawbacks of Anapod and iTunes:
iTunes - Not very customizable. What you initially see is what you get. The more music you have the bigger this issue becomes. It also drives me crazy how tied it is to its online store.
Anapod - Does not actually manage your music. Even when I used Anapod to work with my Shuffle, I still managed everything Media Center, exported my playlists, and then used Anapod to transfer the music.
Hope this helps,