How to install iPhone, iPad, or iPod drivers without iTunes in Windows

If you have an Apple iPhone or iPod, and you want to use it with Microsoft Windows without installing the massive iTunes application suite, you may think you are out of luck. It seems that Apple went to great lengths to force you to install their bloated iTunes software.

In order to use an iPhone or iPod without iTunes in Windows, you will need to install the following components:

• The USBAAPL.SYS driver
• The Apple Mobile Device Support service

You can download these files directly from various places on the internet, or, you can extract them from the Apple QuickTime installer using an archive management tool like 7-Zip. We don't recommend downloading files from file-sharing systems, as you have no way of being sure the contents haven't been tampered with. It's much better to extract the files from the official Apple QuickTime installers, though it's more complicated.

The information at Install iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad drivers without installing iTunes (at copytrans.net*) offers a utility to perform the download and installation automatically, and partial instructions for extracting the files yourself if you prefer that method.