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Media (Apple) Media

iPod Alternatives for Mac OS X? 151

Posted by Cliff from the something-that-doesn't-start-with-'i' dept.
pazu13 writes "I had a first-generation iPod which treated me badly and finally died, after roughly two years of use. I bought another one last year, but after a battery failure several months ago and a sad iPod icon this morning, I think it's time to take my business elsewhere. However, I own a Mac (which has treated me well), and Apple's market dominance seems to have driven most competitors from their own platform. XNJB appears to provide Mac-users more freedom of choice, but outside of this does anyone have a good recommendation for a non-Apple Mac OS X-compatible MP3 player?"
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iPod Alternatives for Mac OS X? More

iPod Alternatives for Mac OS X?

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  • Cowon (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 06, 2006 @11:30PM (#17141190)
    I personally have gone through probably half a dozen or so mp3 players and I have to say I'm very pleased with my Cowon. Cowon makes one of the best sounding mp3 players around and is guaranteed to work with both Mac and Linux. The storage space on their flash based players is a little small, but otherwise I really can't complain.

    • Re:Cowon (Score:4, Informative)

      by SaidinUnleashed ( 797936 ) on Wednesday December 06, 2006 @11:42PM (#17141302)
      Seconded, and I'll even toss in a bonus url

      http://www.cowonglobal.com/ [cowonglobal.com]
    • I've heard good things about them as well, I've also had great luck with my old MPIO 256mb mp3 player and it shows up as a mass storage device on any platform I chose. As far as newer mp3 players I've heard they've departed from their easy mass storage ways and gone to needing all sorts of crazy drivers and such...I'd say find one you like that is universal without any form of manager then use your favorite music program to sync the files up.
    • I'll be another "second" to this.

      I have a Cowon iAudio X5, and it's a great player for audio, which I bought it for. It uses a USB Hard Drive interface, drag and drop, so it works well. Caveat is that it does not use the itunes format, but you can easily find converters to get you MP3 (great battery life, lower quality), Ogg (Good battery live, better quality), or FLAC (poor battery life, excellent quality).

      It also plays WAV and I think WMA, but I've not tried it with either.

      It can play video, but you need
      • > FLAC (poor battery life, excellent quality).

        Not that I've doen any tests but why would flac provide bad battery life?

        The codec is optimised to need crunching while ocmpressing yes but the playback is lightweight and integer, surely that should make flac provide the best battery life.

        Or am I missing something?

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by jimstapleton ( 999106 )
          More drive use is my guess - it cant hold the file in memory as easily.

          the device does bump a lot more when playing FLAC, which does make sense, you can feel a couple of jitters when it does a read.

  • Official iTunes compatibility list (Score:5, Informative)

    by tfinniga ( 555989 ) on Wednesday December 06, 2006 @11:30PM (#17141194)
    I imagine you've seen the official list of compatible players for iTunes on OSX [apple.com]

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Wordplay ( 54438 )
      Unfortunately, between "Date Modified: September 26, 2005" and the speed at which 3rd party MP3 players have been improving, that's not as helpful as one might like.

    • Re:Official iTunes compatibility list (Score:4, Informative)

      by SEMW ( 967629 ) on Wednesday December 06, 2006 @11:50PM (#17141354)
      That's a very old list, from back in the days of the G1 ipod and the Nomad jukebox. I doubt any of the players in that list are made anymore.
      • Ahhhh...my old 2 GB hard drive based Nomad...4 hour battery life...horrible interface...boy I'm glad that piece of &#%@ is nowhere to be found...
      • bottom of that page says:

        Article ID: 93548 Date Created: December 15, 2003 Date Modified: September 26, 2005

        the question did say OS X compatible, but did not mention if they have to use iTunes. so maybe there are more options.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rueger ( 210566 )
      As some of us have found, [community-media.com] appearing on Apple's "compatibility" lists does not necessarily mean that hardware is compatible.

      Or that it's sorta kinda compatible but only in some cases...

      Beware...
  • ...used to support almost every mp3 player out there, not sure if the new mac version of iTunes still does.

    • Re:The old iTunes on Mac... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by RalphBNumbers ( 655475 ) on Wednesday December 06, 2006 @11:51PM (#17141358)
      iTunes still supports more or less the same set of 3rd party MP3 players they used to however many years ago when the iPod came out.
      Since the iPod got big, Apple stopped writing drivers for other peoples players, and the player manufacturers stopped developing their own iTunes plug-ins with Apple's SDKs for fear of assisting 'the competition' (a brain-dead move if you ask me, there are bound to be some disgruntled iPod owners who don't dislike iTunes, and if one of the also-rans had good iTunes support they could scoop them up easily).

      I know, I almost got a used 20GB Zen from a friend for about the same price as the iPod Shuffle I ended up getting. But when I looked at the Zen's support under iTunes, the plugin hadn't been updated since the days of iTunes 3.0, and lacked support for basic things like playlists, or adding the first song to an empty player (you had to use some other software to load the first song back onto the player if you emptied it completely, the plug-in only worked with a populated device). And as much as people like to complain about it's minor quirks, and as much as I preferred SJMP back in the day when Apple bought and reworked it, iTunes has really grown on me over the years.

      So I went with the shuffle, and never looked back. Given that it's become a more or less permanent fixture in my pocket, I'm actually really glad I got something small and rugged.
      • Not making life easier for the user by not supporting iTunes is crazy. The other crazy thing is changing the way the devices communicate (media player side) so you are pretty much forced to write new drivers.

  • Buy Used. (Score:3, Informative)

    by maeka ( 518272 ) on Wednesday December 06, 2006 @11:33PM (#17141224) Journal
    The iRiver H3x0 is very affordable, has great community support, has easily replaceable batteries and hard drives, and runs Rockbox like a MFing champ.
    • What library-management programs would a Rockbox-based player work with on OS X?

      Anything that requires manually managing music using the Finder is a huge drag.

      • Re:How does it integrate? (Score:5, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 06, 2006 @11:56PM (#17141392)
        ...and drop.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by jrockway ( 229604 )
        Rockbox does the library management itself. Drop your music on the player, and it will index everything for you when you boot it. It does it in a background thread, so you can still listen to music and play games while it's updating the database.

        If you're not familiar, Rockbox is seriously awesome. It supports Ogg / FLAC / Apple Lossless / WAV / AIFF / MP3 / MIDI / MOD / (many others that I don't use), and has software DSP for crossfade, gapless playback, crossfeed (makes headphones sound a bit more like
        • Do you know if it supports being plugged into ipod dock accessories like the kenwood cd changer interface? This is the whole reason I'm buying an iPod - no other player has this feature, at least that I can find. I cannot find anything about this on the rockbox site or wiki.

  • Have you considered a Zune? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 06, 2006 @11:33PM (#17141228)
    This post paid for by Microsoft.

  • Compatible with OSX, or *iTunes*? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mrchaotica ( 681592 ) * on Wednesday December 06, 2006 @11:36PM (#17141250)

    If you just want something you can use with a Mac, that's easy: get any music player that supports being mounted as a removable disk and having music added to it via the Finder (or other filesystem utility).

    If, on the other hand, you want a player that syncs with iTunes like an iPod does... that's probably harder to find.

    • Finder is dandy for adding files to an MP3 player, but I don't know how to use it to delete them. I saw the free memory on my player quickly disappear and discovered all the "deleted" content in .Trashes. Maybe someone has a
      • Just empty your trash while your device is plugged in. It should empty the trash everywhere it can, in theory.
        • Just empty your trash while your device is plugged in. It should empty the trash everywhere it can, in theory.

          Yeah because, you know, Macs are sooo user friendly. ;)
          • Just empty your trash while your device is plugged in. It should empty the trash everywhere it can, in theory.

            Yeah because, you know, Macs are sooo user friendly. ;)

            Has always worked for me...

      • rm
    • I second the idea of any music player that mounts as a USB disk. I use an iRiver H340.

      For syncing, don't copy files in the Finder - it will litter your disk with .DS_Store.

      I use rsync. It is a command-line utility, but you can very easily set it up to run from a script file in the dock if you want. I organise my music files in my own directory structure just as I want them on my music player. Then I have iTunes set up not to make copies of files when I add them to the iTunes library.

      For me at least, that is

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by GauteL ( 29207 )
      There are ways of getting iTunes to sync [muxton.com] to other mp3 players as long as they operate as a simple USB-disk.

  • Open Source (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kabaju42 ( 959652 ) on Wednesday December 06, 2006 @11:37PM (#17141254)
    Maybe what we need is an open source MP3 player. Any takers?
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Open Source (Score:5, Informative)

      by mrchaotica ( 681592 ) * on Wednesday December 06, 2006 @11:51PM (#17141362)

      The Neuros [neurosaudio.com] and any player that supports Rockbox [rockbox.org] (which includes iPods, incidentally).

      • Keep in mind Rockbox doesn't support the "newest" 30GB video, 80GB video and 2nd-gen Nano because Apple changed controller chips and the Rockbox gang has yet to decipher it.
      • What do you recommend for Rockbox devices?

        When I looked into it, it seemed like the supported devices list was pretty short and in most cases, not fully implemented: some didn't support all file formats (ogg is my preferred format and it wasn't working on many) some had extremely short battery life when using Rockbox (I think that was the iPods) some seemed to not be available in the US, and in the iPod case, the currently available models weren't supported, I believe.

        • Beats me... I have an iPod (running the default software). Unlike the people who want Rockbox, I actually like iTunes.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jafac ( 1449 )
        Are you talking about the NeurosDAC?
        Their page is a little vague - this is a portable MP3 player? Why are they calling it a "Digital Audio Computer" - and why is Windows listed under System Requirements? Is this a Windows device?
    • I think you mean Rockbox. [rockbox.org] Sure, the hardware isn't open-source but the firmware is. That's close enough.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Greedo ( 304385 )
      Maybe what he needs is a newer iPod. His old one was a G1 ... those were (comparatively) heavy, bad on battery usage, and all that.

      Get a nano, or a new video-capable iPod. Why try and jump through hoops mounting something in the Finder, dragging files, etc., and dealing with an interface that will inevitably be clunkier?

  • get with the times (Score:2, Insightful)

    by countach ( 534280 )
    So you had a 1st generation ipod, and it died. So then you bought another 1st gen ipod, and it too died. Gee, ya think maybe it's time to upgrade to a 5th gen??

    • Not to mention spring for the extended warranty -- given how often iPods break (at least in my experience), it's actually worth it.

      • Re:get with the times (Score:4, Informative)

        by Golias ( 176380 ) on Thursday December 07, 2006 @01:16AM (#17142014)
        It sounds to me like the point of failure in both cases was the hard drive.

        And almost every MP3 player on the market uses either the Samsung or the Toshiba. No matter what you buy, the failure rate of the drive will be about the same.

        Instead of buying another player, why not look into dropping a new drive into your current one. It's not hard to do (I just did it with an old, beat-up 3G iPod of my own), and instructions are all over them internets out there.
        • In fact, it might not even be the hard drive. I have a 4th gen iPod, and I got the sad iPod icon. Resetting it worked, but the problem recurred several times. I took it to the Apple Store and had a genius look at it. He took it to the back and fixed a loose connection on the drive cable, and didn't even charge me anything for the repair, despite the fact that it was out of warranty by 3 weeks. It's worked great since then. You might want to check out other causes for what ails your iPod - could save you som
          • I fixed one iPod that way too. I don't konw if the connector gets a little corrosion over time, or if it just got loose. The inside seems pretty clean without hint of corrosion, but removing and reseating the drive connector fixed it.

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      or maybe like any sane person he becomes wary of said company that makes the faulty products and does exactly what he is doing, research for something better. Realistically as far as features, reliability and price goes apple is WAY WAY down the bottom of the market. Style and name is all they really have going for them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by xjerky ( 128399 )
      What if he doesn't have USB2.0? Firewire went bye bye as of the video iPods. I do think that was pretty messed up of Apple. USB2 hadn't been standard in Macs even 2 full years before they come out with an iPod that required it. So your not-so-old Mac because obsolete much sooner than it needed to.
    • The post wasn't clear on whether the replacement was a 1G iPod or just any iPod.

      Replacement batteries are cheap though, and despite popular impressions, it's not that hard to get into. I've popped open a first gen nano and two 4th gen iPods. I'd probably avoid the mini and the new nano though, I'm pretty sure those are a little harder to get into.

  • Any MP3 player that works as USB flash works (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Some of those MP3 players doesn't require special software, you just plug it in and drag over mp3 files from itune. :)
  • I've just had my fifth iPod die of hard-drive failure. This one finally outlasted the three month replacement warranty*, so I won't be getting it replaced for free.

    I don't think it's the iPod. I think that certain people generate iPod destroying fields, and I'm one of them.
    Seriously, I've met one other guy (at the Apple service centre) with the same problem (he was on his third iPod), but every other iPod owner I know has never had trouble.

    I may risk buying a Shuffle - it's cheaper, with no moving parts.

    *So
    • I may risk buying a Shuffle - it's cheaper, with no moving parts.

      Make sure you get the new one that doesn't have a built-in USB plug -- the life of the 1st-gen one I had was tragically cut short when my boss accidentally broke the plug off when it was plugged into the computer.

      • Make sure you get the new one that doesn't have a built-in USB plug -- the life of the 1st-gen one I had was tragically cut short when my boss accidentally broke the plug off when it was plugged into the computer.

        I wonder how long before they use the magnetic adaptor for the iPods?

        • In the case of the 1st-gen Shuffle? Probably about the same time that USB starts using magnetic connectors. For other iPods it isn't a problem because there has to be a cable between the device and the computer anyway.

          • In the case of the 1st-gen Shuffle? Probably about the same time that USB starts using magnetic connectors. For other iPods it isn't a problem because there has to be a cable between the device and the computer anyway.

            I realised last night that the iPod is not heavy enough to work well with magnetic connector. You would most probably have the iPod pulled from the desk before the connector separated.

            • I was mostly being sarcastic -- having a magnetic connector wouldn't have done a damn thing in my case, because the force applied was in bending.

      • Your anecdote is interesting, but IMO the built-in USB is my favorite part of my "old" (6 months) shuffle. Makes a great memory stick!
    • I worked with a woman once who killed computers. Her computer would spontaneously reboot periodically, and we couldn't figure out why. We switched out the computer, the monitor, the keyboard and mouse. We tried different outlets, and different outlets on different circuits. We swapped out her desk, her chair, and the chair mat. Finally we put a grounding strap on her wrist and attached it to the desk. No more problems. I shit you not.

      There has to be something to the fact that some people create strong enoug

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by log0n ( 18224 )
        My father has the same problem with cell phones. Something in his physiology generates interference to the point he needs to carry an external antenna to make calls. Also interferes with broadcast TV and radio signals, computer screens, etc. Weird XFiles stuff.
    • Seriously. I bought a Creative Micro June '05. They asked if I wanted the replacement plan and I was like "Why the hell not?" so I spent the 25 bucks on the replacement plan.

      Two weeks later, I drop the Micro and the HDD shatters. I take it to Best Buy, say that it doesn't turn on, they told me to go pick out a new one. This was 2 weeks after the 1-gen Nano came out so I got the 4-GB Nano. I use it for a while, but the thing gets scratched to all hell within a month.

      Solution? Drain the battery and say it

      • Very creative. (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Kadin2048 ( 468275 )
        Not bad, huh?

        Yeah, dude! Insurance fraud is amazing!

        • There's nothing wrong with stealing from corporations. It only hurts rich people, and they aren't really people.
        • I think it's revenge for all the people who were lied to by overzealous salespeople about that plan (I remember being told that it covered water damage- and then being denied when that's what happened to my laptop)- it's only fair that if they lie to you that you get to lie to them back.
      • Luckily I've never had to result to fraud with my gear. Almost everything of mine carries service plans, and about zero items ever make it to the end of their service plan life with me. Hell my HDTV is about to die after 3 years. Perfect time of year for me ^^
    • I have two first generation iPods that I've inherited from various people. Both still work fine. I just got a new 80 gig, not because my first gens died, but because I got sick of having to swap out songs whenever I wanted to listen to different music. I understand people experience problems with every gen music player, but I just want to state that there are still first gen players out there running without a hitch. I imagine I won't use them anymore, due to the bulk and lack of capacity, but I imagine

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rayonic ( 462789 )
      > "I may risk buying a Shuffle - it's cheaper, with no moving parts."

      My old 1GB Shuffle was pretty great, until Apple's firmware update bricked it. Computers wouldn't even recognize it enough to rollback the firmware update (or try it again).

      Looked online afterwards and found out that this is a common issue.

  • Try a creative, (Score:1, Informative)

    by mjwx ( 966435 )
    I have a creative Zen Neeon, better sound quality than an ipod shuffle plus you get a screen (I paid the same price for both one year apart and got 6 gigs in the zen compared to 1 in the shuffle). Just plug it in and copy music to it as if it were a thumb drive (disclaimer: I don't know how it handles DRMed music, I don't have any but I have heard some complaints about it not handling fairplay too well). I am yet to find a song it wont play

    Plus creative supply better headphones than Apple (I tested the crea
    • Actually, if you go with a Creative, definately skip the Neeon, MAYBE a Neeon 2, but not the original HDD driven version. Maybe you havn't used any other MP3 player, but there are pauses of up to 3 seconds between songs on my Neeon. Otherwise I reccomend getting a Zen, they're great. the bundled mediasource software is aweful really, so I'd steer clear of that, but the player will mount as a USB Mass Storage device and uses normal M3U playlists in a folder aptly named "Playlists". So yeah, get a Creative, b

  • Archos (Score:3, Informative)

    by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <slashdot.worf@net> on Thursday December 07, 2006 @12:42AM (#17141760)
    Archos provides an iTunes plugin for their line of MP3 and video players. I'm not confident it'll work for iTunes video transfers (but it might), but it works fine for MP3s. Just make sure you make the Windows DRM partition very small, and the USB mode is mass storage.

    There are many iTunes plugins as well for any mp3 player that appears as a mass-storage device, and a lot of good MP3 players support mass storage mode (for DRM-free music). I believe the Sandisk Sansa appears as a mass storage device. As do the newer satellite radio receivers (like the XM Inno and the Sirius Stiletto).

  • Minority (Score:5, Informative)

    by electrosoccertux ( 874415 ) on Thursday December 07, 2006 @12:44AM (#17141772)
    I think you're in the minority of people to experience two Ipod issues that close together (I know many of you know friends who have Ipod problems, but given how many people have Ipods, that's not saying much).

    Coming from the other side of things, I've wished since about week two of owning my Creative Zen Touch (40GB) that I had bought something else. Namely, the Ipod. The company is a pain to deal with if you have support issues. So is their player. Disconnected three times after being on hold 17 minutes each time (HMMM....). If you just want something to listen to music with, their players will work. But don't expect any of the promised firmware updates to fix any issues with the player, so make sure you know all the current problems with it. The problems with mine? Scrolling is horrible. 10x worse than the Ipods (which is perfect). You move your finger down the strip and the UI responds half a second later. On top of the that, it's innaccurate and un-predictable. Sometimes moving your finger a mm will move the song selector one strip, sometimes not at all, and sometimes it'll jump down three. You simply can't select songs safely when you're driving. In contrast, the Ipod's scroll wheel is predictable and goes where you want it. Every single time.

    Other issues:
    -after about 6 months of use (coming up on my second six months, had to send the first in to fix the harddrive) the "forward/skip" [>>|] button halfway breaks. By that I mean sometimes you want to fast forward in the song (this is another thing I'll get to later) so you have to hold down the forward/skip button until the slider gets to the point in the song you want to listen to...so you let go of the fast forward, and then, strangely, the player skips to the next track. Apparently sometimes taking your finger off this button after having it held down tells the player to stop fast forwarding and skip to the end of the song.
    -As for fast forwarding, it's the most un-intuitive design. It isn't easy like on the Ipod, where you press the middle button and then move your thumb around the wheel. When you do this, the Ipod moves the slider that marks what part of the song is playing. You find the part you want, stop moving your thumb on the wheel, press the middle button again, and it plays. On Creative's players, you have to press forward and hold it down for [what feels like, I haven't timed it] 5 seconds to skip 30 seconds. A total PITA. Like to listen to your songs gapless? Be prepared to hold that button down and watch the UI for 15 seconds--(the slider movement speed increases exponentially, which means) when you finally hit the minute mark you want to listen to, you let go and find that it keeps moving ahead for the equivalent of two-ish minutes. Then it starts playing. So until you get used to letting go early, you'll be holding "|" down for another 5 seconds till you get to wherever you wanted. On top of all that, the player doesn't anticipate "jee, you know, this guy is scrolling forward and this part of the song isn't in my memory, I better spin up the harddrive to be ready for it", it waits until you've stopped fastforwarding, and then decides to spin up the harddrive, load that part of the song, and play it. And then if you overshoot where you were fastforwarding to, it does the exact same thing, it stops spinning and waits till you've stopped fastforwarding to spin up the harddrive and load that part of the song (which can't be good for the harddrive anyways, I'm sure this is what broke my first harddrive. Thankfully no problems with the warrant replacement). Like I said, don't expect to use this when you're driving.
    -If something about your player breaks, be prepared to pay the shipping costs [and insurance if you want to be safe] on your end as well as $35 (when mine broke this was how much it was, I think it might have changed now) as a "processing" fee.
    -good luck finding player covers if you want it protected. There's two that I know of, but they're both only available online. One is leather and costs something like $
    • Also I forgot to add that the harddrive is not mountable as a flash drive on computers without the Zen software, or computers that cannot play PlaysForSure media (if you have the Zen 2.xxxx firmware)

  • Replacing an iPod battery is EASY. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Archeopteryx ( 4648 ) * <benburchNO@SPAMpobox.com> on Thursday December 07, 2006 @01:11AM (#17141980) Homepage
    Try these folks; IPod Rescue [myaffiliateprogram.com] who are the same as Powerbook Rescue and who fixed my clamshell iBook in 2002 and it has stayed fixed!

  • I have to say it (Score:3, Informative)

    by xrayspx ( 13127 ) on Thursday December 07, 2006 @01:52AM (#17142240) Homepage
    Amarok runs very well for me from Fink (FINALLY! Thanks RangerRick et. al. who made that happen), and Amarok supports the 3 or 4 MP3 players I've tried just fine (Archos and iPod mainly are what I've used).

    I have 1.4.4, after many fits and starts with bad libxine1, etc, everything seems to have evened out and it works.

    Give it a shot.
  • Nearly all of the ones that come with the MP3 players are utter crap. These [v-moda.com] look sweet and sound sweeter. Highly recommended.
    • I just can't stand earbuds. Lightweight supra-aural headphones are far more comfortable. For example, the one that came with my father's old Walkman was great (y'know, early 90s, when Sony's stuff was not utter crap).
  • I can recommend the iAudio's by Cowon. I own a M3 for almost 2 years now and especially in combination with my AKG K 26 P headphones it is great. If your're looking for excellent sound, this is the way for you to go. My brother owns a newer M5 and is also very satisfied. Plus, it is recognized as a Hard Drive via USB without the need of any special software, so you should't have any problems with your Mac as well.

  • Can't go wrong with Archos (Score:3, Informative)

    by Jaruzel ( 804522 ) on Thursday December 07, 2006 @05:30AM (#17143398) Homepage Journal
    You can't go wrong with Archos [archos.com]. They do a nice range of players. I use an aging Archos Gmini 400 [regmedia.co.uk] (sadly discontinued).

    The nice things about them are:

    1. Very Good build quality
    2. Large variety of players from simple music only to full blown media players.
    3. Mount as standard USB mass storage
    4. NO DRM what-so-ever
    5. Supports mp3, wav, ogg, wma, wmv, divx, xvid (some formats are player dependent)
    6. Windows Media Player can sync to it (as can many other freeware library managers)

    If my Gmini died, I go straight to the web and buy another Archos, no question.

    -Jar.
    • I have an Archos Studio 10 and it won't mount with OS X anymore. In the past I've experienced many freeze-ups to the whole OS when the Archos was attached or copying files to/from my Mac. I've had some succcess with OS 9 still. Archos no longer offers Mac drivers for this product.

      I think my only alternative now is to attach it to a PC for reformatting and ebay it.
  • Have you considered opening it up to see if you could repair it yourself? If what you're dealing with is an HDD failure, the most common cause of such failures in iPods is bad connectivity. It typically sounds and looks the same as a *real* HDD failure, with the HDD starting to spin up, then abrubtly stopping with a click. I opened a friend's "broken" 4th gen with a flat-head screwdriver and secured the cable in place. Hasn't had a problem since.
  • I have a Nex IA (a Compact Flash-based player) and I recommend against using it with a Mac - OS X always mounts the thing as read-only. I don't know whether the Nex Black (the IA's successor, among other things capable off Ogg Vorbis playback) works with Macs, though.
  • I have no idea if they work with iTunes, but I just came across these relatively inexpensive Ipod [fifthunit.com] ripoffs [fifthunit.com], sold through fifthunit [fifthunit.com], direct-ship from China.

    I just ordered one of the shuffle ones last night, so I'll know soon enough. Can't beat it for ~$50 for the 2GB one.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mgblst ( 80109 )
      Sure, if you don't mind throwing away $50.

      Firstly, I have made the mistake of buying from direct from China before - and when something breaks, you are on your own. The support is horrible, and even if they do accept it back, it takes a lot of money to send, takes weeks, and is so inclined to get lost on the way.

      Secondly, this thing looks so shodily made, there is no way I would spend any money on this.

      Let me guess, you are one of those guys who gets all his christmas presents from the dollar down the road,
    • The fiance's father bought 2 while he was over in China. It's decent for use as just a music player. It mounts as a regular flash drive, but the player needs to be turned on first. The interface itself takes some getting used to, but it is still usable. There are several games on the machine and it can record sound, which is pretty useful. So it's a gamble, but it's only $50. Have fun with it!
  • Any player that looks like a removable drive to the computer AND plays the tracks loaded onto it through that interface can be used with iTunes or any other media player on any platform. I used a non-iPod flash player for three years before the iPod Shuffle came out, using a smart playlist to create a random selection of tracks that fit on my player, and then dragged the whole playlist to the virtual drive to play.

    (this is where I "invented" (independently at least) the iPod shuffle... I feel that it's a pr

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