After 7 days and only one successful replay, I finally throw in the towel and will return this blue brick for something else that will work on a macintosh computer. Nothing has worked–not reformatting, not rebooting, not erasing and reformatting…nothing. And now we are frozen again–and cannot hold and press the center key anymore either. So much for a great Christmas gift for my son.
This was such a frustrating process–and I did not give in easily. I really wish I had NOT listened to the girl at Best Buy OR the stuff on the web about how great this device is–because I feel like I was sucked in…
So I will ask ONE LAST TIME…
Besides the pricey iPod, is there an MP3 player that WILL work with Macintosh?
I really don’t get all the problems people seem to be having with Macs. Or with the clip in general. Seems nearly everyone who has a problem has a faulty unit, but just so I’m not speaking out my bum i proved it to myself: I took my clip up to my son’s Mac, plugged it in, A “SANSA M350” Icon appeared, I opened that and drug some AC/DC (mp3) into the MUSIC directory, hit the eject, (waited until everything completed) unplugged the clip, it says disconnected, then wait wait wait whilst the clip rebuilds, plugged the clip into his stereo, searched for the song we just put on there and cranked it up.
This was absolutely the first time I had ever used it on a Mac, or anything other than Linux (where it works flawlessly, too). In fact I haven’t even touched that Mac in over a year and it just worked.
It worked exactly as one would expect.
So the clip absolutely, positively, DOES WORK WITH MACS!!! Even for a non-Mac user. So does every other mp3 players we have around here (4 or 5 of 'em), only one of which is an iPod (which incidentally has never been plugged into the Mac - only my Linux box).
The Clip works ok with my Mac. The only tricky part I learned was that if you delete a file from the Clip, you need to empty the trash before ejecting it to ensure it is actually deleted.
are you running os 10.4 or above? try turning off the player completely and putting on the hold switch and pressing the center button while plugging it in and see if you get better results. Also note the clip can only play mp3 , wma, and .aa files so by default itunes uses aac encoding for their music so those files will not be compatible
This is my experience with the Sansa C250 on my Macs . . .
Just purchased the c250 to try to use with my Macs. Admittedly, the package mentions only Windows software but I figured there must be a way to use it with the Mac. After trial and error, a few screen freezes, a few lost folders of music after disconnecting, I think I’ve found how to make it work.
Turn on player - go into Settings - Format player - erases the pre-loaded songs and pictures. (Unless you want to keep them, of course).
Turn player off, connect to Mac with the USB cable.
Player icon should mount on desktop. Copy your folders of music into the MUSIC folder on player.
Launch Disk Utility on the Mac and Unmount the Sansa C250 volume.
Unplug player from Mac.
So far this seems to work.
I think it’s a great little mp3 player - certainly not a bad price compared to iPods.
Frustrated with the high cost of buying a new I-Pod for my Mac (my old one died the other day after a year & 1/2 of continued use), I noticed on your website that downloading a driver for Macintosh even though several are listed when I select the last one for Mac OS X, it instead tries to download a PC driver. The problem? Mac computers are incapable of opening a file that ends with extension exe. It has to end with dmg. Why isn’t this working on your site?
I called Sandisk customer service, and they told me to post here.
So I read the December message and it’s helpful. But can that be done without downloading the driver?
feromon, I appreciate your love of windows. It doesn’t answer my question, however… So does this sansa c250 need to have 10.4 to run? I am unable to get my computer to show the sansa on the desktop, but it does show up under system profiler. I am using 10.3.9, incidently. Jason
Not to split hairs but OSX is rooted in BSD Unix, hence unix-like just like Linux. That being said, I’m sure you’re probably more acquainted with *nix anyway as I’m just getting my feet wet with Ubuntu, having only briefly played around with Suse and Red Hat in the past.
I can relate to the OP as I tried everything under the sun many months ago with the two clips and could get neither one to play nice with my XP rig. I think it was a combination of MTP not working at all as well as clip db freezing after heavy msc music transfer via MSC; both attributed to an OS fresh install way past its prime. Since that time, I have reformatted and am running MCE 2005 XP now. The clip is working great and I love it! So glad I gave it a 3rd try…
Yes, the Sensa clip works first time on a mac- drag and drop in the window, perfectly OK for Mp3- the only “little” problem is that Audible .aa files are not properly loaded, won’t play or accept their tags, and simply freeze the clip when you try. Back to Amazon with this, if the manufacturer can’t sort this out- and Sandisc are telling me that macs don’t even need software to load the player- why should I waste my life trying to make their product do what it claims?
The only things that run reliably with an Apple is another Apple (and even that is questionable).
Just kidding . . . don’t start lighting those torches for a flame war! :smileyvery-happy:
You should be able to connect in MSC mode and load music (.mp3s) onto your player with a Mac. However you’re right, there are some things that require a Windows machine, like formatting and updating. Linux fans are in the same boat. Like it or not, it is a Windows world. But you already know that. So you, being in the minority must make concessions and make do with what you’ve got, devise clever work-arounds, or (as Apple hopes) drink the Kool-Aid and buy an I-pod.
Most of your I-pod owners are also Mac users and most Windows users prefer ‘non-pods’. There are exceptions of course, but it seems like that’s the way it is. It all comes down to choices. We’ve all got them. Democrats vs. Republicans, Toyota fans vs. Honda fans, dogs vs. cats, men vs. women, paper or plastic. :wink:
A discussion forum is a good thing all around. It shouldn’t be viewed as a weakness of (or in) the product. Good ideas blossom when people discuss things; users help other users with problems, whether it be product-related or just unfamiliarity with the unit; the manufacturer (SanDisk) by monitoring the forum learn what issues are causing concerns with its customers and hear very quickly of genuine bugs that need addressing, as well as being able to provide support directly to the users by releasing firmware updates and making relevant announcements in the most expeditious manner possible.
