Help, please, for potential Mac User?

I have searched this forum for info on using a SanDisk Fuze with a Mac.  While there are many postings, they seem to contain contradictory info.  Likewise at Best Buy - answer depends on who you ask!  I am hoping someone can tell me if I can do what I want to do with a Fuze on a Mac.

I want to use the Fuze primarily for pictures, like a high quality photo keychain.  They would be jpeg files, in either iPhoto or my Canon Image Browser software.  I am not interested in movies and videos.  I would use it for music, and realize that I would need to save my song files in iTunes as mp3 files, which I know how to do.  I do see that I would have to use the Fuze in “MSC Mode”, which apparently means I can drag and drop the files, but can’t use iTunes to manage the files.  Nor, of course, can I use the req’d version of Media Player on my Mac.  I could use the FM tuner I’m sure.

I am running Mac OS 10.4.11.  Some posts seem to say that 10.5 works but 10.4 doesn’t, for example.

Can I do this?  Is it problem free and fairly straightforward?  Are the files easy to find to drag and drop?  Will the Fuze show up on my desktop without doing fancy stuff?  Or is my best path just to bite the bullet and buy an iPod at twice the price?

Thanks ahead of time.

I’m not a Mac expert, so I could be wrong on this, but it should show up on your desktop like a flash drive - most MP3 players export themselves as flash drives anyway. If it doesn’t, however, then whether or not I can help you depends on whether OS X uses the same dmesg and mount commands as in Linux.

That is my concern - will it show up and accept drag-and-drop photo and music files?  I read contradictory info.

I meant to comment that I realize that I can likely put my files onto a MicroSD using a reader, and insert the SD into the Fuze and get at the files that way.

I am not a major mac user but I do use one at school with my fuze. In general you can drag and grop music files. Pictures and video are a different sort. Sansa recomends using Sansa media Converter for pics and videos. I dont know if it works on mac. So what you can do is look on the forums for the exact specs and use any photo editing software to get pic files to work so you can drag and drop. Video you can try to use any-video-converter, or another software that works on your mac to get the video set to the specs and then drag and drop the files to your fuze.

In short you can drag and drop music but not pics and video (Without some work)

Regular JPG photos work fine on the Fuze as long as the photos are small. You can use any photo editor to make these. I make copies of my photos that are around 600x450 and put those on my Fuze. They look nice. Some use a smaller resolution(but not smaller than the Fuze screen, which is 176x220). I don’t know what the upper limit is in terms of resolution that the Fuze will accept.