Sony HDD MP3 and a Mac

[Kimi]

My sis' birthday is coming up next month and my parents and I are going to get her an MP3. It came down to an iPod vs Sony HDD MP3 (30GB iPod and 20GB Sony).

We've ended up going for the Sony as it's cheep, she won't fill 30GB and wonldn't use it for video (she'd not have a clue how to do so anyways). Also the killer battery life from Sony is making me want one.

Anyhow I'm now also looking at getting one to replace my iPod when it dies in a year or so. But I'm wondering if they work with Macs at all? I couldn't see it anywhere in tech specs on the stors I was looking at.

I'm not fussed about the software, as I'll probley end up using something else (I'd love it if iTunes could work with it...). But could I just drop and play MP3 onto it? I've never used on other that borrowing my mates from school to mess about with.

 

[finalcoolman]

I HATE iPods. Love Apple's computers and I even love iTunes but HATE iPods. I won't be caught dead with a iPod, EVER.

Ok, now that my rant is over, I use a Sony MP3 player (maybe the only one on MacRumors who does). I actually alternate, sometimes I use my cellphone for MP3s or my Sony flash player or my MiniDisc (and in super rare cases my PSP).

Ok enough with me and my music. First off you can not currently* use any Sony audio player with a Mac (with the exception of the PSP since it supports drag and drop for audio). In order to transfer files onto the players with a computer you need to use one of Sony's two jukebox programs. The first is Connect Player the second is SonicStage, both are Windows 2000/XP only. By the way if you happen to have a decent Windows machine in the house and you buy this DO NOT install the included Connect Player. Connect Player is absolute crap, download the latest version of SonicStage (I think it's at 3.4 now) instead, which I have to say is pretty decent now. You can find out more about this or where to download at www.minidisc.org. But you can still use a Sony player on a Mac for data storage via drag and drop. But it will not recognise music on it if you draged and dropped, has to be put on their with one of the two programs, just like the iPod and iTunes.

*P.S. I say currently for two reasons. The first is Sony could always make a program for Macs to allow us poor Mac users to transfer our music on to Sony units. Even just a simple program with just basic file transfer capability would do. I don't know why they won't, probably because they know almost all Mac users are a bunch of die hard fanatical sheep and won't use anything that's not iPod for their music Sorry, forgot I was on an Apple forum

The second reason is the mysterious Intel Macs. If people can actually get Windows installed on an Intel Mac someone can try installing SonicStage, and lo and behold, a Sony player on a Mac.

 

[Nermal]

Can't you just mount it as a drive and drop files onto it? My old Sony player would find any MP3s on the disk, they didn't need to be in any particular structure.

 

[Kimi]

Can't you just mount it as a drive and drop files onto it? My old Sony player would find any MP3s on the disk, they didn't need to be in any particular structure.

I'd guess for the same reason you can't do it with an iPod. The Sony soes menus like an iPod so it'll need some kine of database.

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Anyhow, this is a bugger. Would VPC help at all? But that would be a bugger as I wouldn't be able to get podcasts working. I'm not buying a PC for one of these. I might end up needing to buy another iPod, hope they make something before I need to buy one.

 

[finalcoolman]

Can't you just mount it as a drive and drop files onto it? My old Sony player would find any MP3s on the disk, they didn't need to be in any particular structure.

What particular Sony player is that?

 

[Nermal]

I can't remember the model number (sold it immediately upon getting my iPod last year), but it was disk-based and officially required SonicStage or whatever it's called.