[noiroi]

i'm looking for a cheap mp3 player, something with a capacity of 256 - 512 mb, nothing fancy, anything that can play mp3s...... something i can take to the gym and such.....
so far i've been able to find quite a few under 100$, however, most of them don't come bundled with drivers for the mac.
my question is: are drivers really necessary ? most of these players are simply "disk on keys" or memory card readers with mp3 playback ability. wouldn't it be possible to copy mp3 files to the device using the finder, like u would with a regular usb storage device?

thanx.

[mattyd]

http://www.apple.com/ipodshuffle/

[CatOne]

Originally posted by noiroi:
i'm looking for a cheap mp3 player, something with a capacity of 256 - 512 mb, nothing fancy, anything that can play mp3s...... something i can take to the gym and such.....
so far i've been able to find quite a few under 100$, however, most of them don't come bundled with drivers for the mac.
my question is: are drivers really necessary ? most of these players are simply "disk on keys" or memory card readers with mp3 playback ability. wouldn't it be possible to copy mp3 files to the device using the finder, like u would with a regular usb storage device?

thanx.

LOL. What planet have you been hiding out on lately, sir?

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

This thread is totally freaky.

[noiroi]

thanx for everybody's help

i'm completely aware of the "ipod shuffle" as well as the rest of the ipod family......

i'll try to make my question clearer:

a. there are many products similar to the "ipod shuffle" on the market already, many of them are cheaper and also have radio and voice recording features.

b. most of these product come bundled with windows drivers only.

c. it seems to me that these product are essentially "disk on keys" or other card readers, with mp3 playback functionality added.

d. usb storage devices, such as "disk on keys" and card readers, are usually recognizable to the mac without additional drivers.

e. considering "c" and "d" it may be possible to use those "generic" mp3 players (copy mp3 file to them) without additional drivers.

does any body know ??

[Tee]

I doubt there is going to much love in these forums for anything but the iPods...

But...

I was just looking at the Lexar LDP-600
http://www.lexar.com/mp3/LDP600.html

From what I can tell by reading the online manual, it is recognized by the Mac as a flash drive.
You just drag your music files onto it to copy them to the player.

I don't think it has any special Mac drivers - and it does not appear to integrate with iTunes (although I'm not sure).

I'm actually considering getting this as my first mp3 player - mainly because it has an integrated FM *transmitter* for easy use in the car and an LCD display, both of which the iPod Shuffle lack.

[mattyd]

And none will let you play songs you buy from the iTunes Music Store, if that's a concern.

[euchomai]

Is there any "mp3 player" that will let you play aac? (other than an iPod?)

[PurpleGiant]

You are correct, the majority of flash based MP# players will mount in the Finder as a normal drive.

[Captain Obvious]

Originally posted by noiroi:


a. there are many products similar to the "ipod shuffle" on the market already, many of them are cheaper and also have radio and voice recording features.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93548

Now where exactly is there one that is cheaper (Mb/$$) than the Shuffle?

[spiky_dog]

Originally posted by euchomai:
Is there any "mp3 player" that will let you play aac? (other than an iPod?)

yeah, some philips players will play non-drm aac. none other than ipods play drm'ed aac files tho.

[Forbodium]

Yeah, well I’m glad this topic was started. Many people have said that the Shuffle is designed for a specific type of music listener. That leaves the rest of us Mac users who want the ability to pick songs from different albums on the fly in a flash-based player, or want a built-in FM tuner.

I’m giving the Lexar LDP-600 some fair consideration. I might even go for the 256MB model if I can get it cheap enough, because I can just expand it later with an SD-card if I need the extra space. There are two detriments that I have discovered about both configurations of the LDP-600:
• First, it doesn’t record to MP3 or anything other than WMA. Are WMA files very usable on a Mac? I’d prefer not to have to use a microsoft product in order to listen-to/impliment a sound file.
• Second, the built-in FM transmitter supposedly does not work very well. That is according to some people on Epinions (click here).

Other relatively inexpensive 512MB players that are supposed to work with the Mac are the Lexar LDP-400 (no FM tuner) and the Sandisk SDMX1 (don’t think it allows FM-recording).