Hi Fonzie,
On Sep 22, 2008, at 7:02 AM, Alfonzo Cuellar wrote:
I had a question about other players like the windows zune.
a friend of mine has one, and was curious as to if I could actually
use the windows zune to sync on the mac, so that I could take songs
from the device, and or add songs to the device.
reason I ask is because, a friend of mine was thinking of getting a
mac, and she has a Windows Zune. She would rather keep the player
around if she can, and not purchase another device if possible.
I heard there was windows zune software that was needed to both use
the device on your computer, and download stuff to it.
Unfortunately, for the Zune at least, the answer is that Microsoft has
included protection that does not allow file transfers with computers
that have not been authenticated with them.
In general, the situation of the Mac's compatibility with other
players runs all the way from certain Creative players that will
actually appear as recognized devices in iTunes (showing up under the
devices category of the Source Table, similar to the iPod) to players
that are just recognized as external devices in Finder (as though they
were attached memory sticks), to which you can transfer music with
VoiceOver's drag and drop as though you were moving files in FInder.
Many MP3 players can be handled with a freeware program called XNJB,
which was developed by a Mac user who owned one of the Creative
Players that did not automatically get recognized in iTunes, and the
software has been extended to support other players. This program is
highly accessible, and is available from:
http://www.wentnet.com/projects/xnjb/
Here is their statement about support for the Zune:
<begin quote>
There has been much excitement recently about getting XNJB to work
with the Zune. Unfortunately Microsoft have put some protection on
file transfers so the Zune has to authenticate with the host computer
before files can be transferred. So currently XNJB will only show a
list of songs and files on your Zune. You cannot (yet) upload or
download anything. If anyone knows how to get around this then please
let me know. I will start working on this soon thanks to linux.com who
have kindly given their Zune to the project
<end quote>
Regular music files (without DRM copy protection) can be transferred
to non-iPod players and played. The newest Creative player will play
iTunes Plus tracks (non-DRM, higher bit rate music purchased from the
iTunes Store that uses AAC encoding). If you have players that you
authorized with Audible on a Windows machine, I believe that any
Audible audiobook tracks you transfer from your Mac to that player
will play. (The problem is that the non-iPod players usually require
firmware updates and an authentication method that is only supplied
under Windows, while for iPods the Audible authorization is performed
automatically through iTunes on your Mac.)
IPods formatted on the Mac now let you transfer purchased music from
the iTunes Store from your player to iTunes, so you can take an iPod
synced to your iTunes library on a different machine, and possibly
with different content, and transfer these tracks into your iTunes
library on a second, new machine. As long as your library is
authorized to play your purchased music (up to 5 computers), these
tracks will play. You may even be able to transfer tracks from an iPod
formatted for your Windows iTunes account to one on your Mac (I don't
know whether this is true, but it's a possibility; it certainly
wouldn't work in the other direction since while Macs can read Windows
formatting, Windows cannot read Mac formatting).
Does anyone own a Windows Zune, and have used it on their mac?
If so, could you let me know how you went about it, in both adding,
subtracting, and downloading content to the device itself?
Hope this answers your question. Maybe someone owns a Zune and can
say more?
Cheers,
Esther
