Solution: Zen Stone Plus Compatibility With Macintosh ~ myCreative Fansite Creative Labs Zen MP3 Players: News / Forums

Saturday, July 14, 2007

Solution: Zen Stone Plus Compatibility With Macintosh

Problem: Can anyone tell me if the zen stone plus works with an apple mac computer - I am worried about compatibility

Solution: My Zen Stone does work with my Mini Mac (OS X 10.4.7). If you connect the Stone via USB when the Mac is on then it doesn't appear as a mass storage device on the desktop. The Stone can be seen by in the system profiler utility, but it's not correctly functioning. To enable you to use the Stone on a Mac you have to reboot the Mac with the Stone already connected via its USB cable. If you unmount the Stone then you have to reboot again.

When you have done the reboot so that the Stone appears as a volume on the Mac then it works very well. It even appears on iTunes (Mac version) as a Nomad MuVo. This is without using any special software/drivers to make this happen. So not only is the ZEN Stone a mass storage device that can be filled by just drag-n-drop, you can choose to use iTunes if you wish. There's no 'random fill' facility in iTunes (as you get with a shuffle), but random filling can be done by using the iTunes 'party shuffle' feature - just create a new party shuffle list then drag it to the Nomad MuVo icon. Easy.

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Please leave your comments if this is helpful. So that others can use it to resolve their similiar problem. Thanks!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...: i plugged my stone directly into my macbook and it showed up in the finder and as a device in itunes. i left it plugged into the computer while i left the house and it seems to have a full charge. haven't done anything else yet, but mac compatibility is off to a good start.

os x 10.4.11

macbook (intel mac.); January 1, 2008 9:47 AM
Anonymous said...: Did you get any further with your Zen Stone on your Mac. I can get mine to work for a day or so but I have to keep re-formating it on a PC as the drive keeps getting corrupted. It shows up in iTunes on my Mac OK in OS X and mounts on the desktop. It just does not seem to hold the data for more than a couple of sessions.

Anyone have any ideas?

Creative have emailed me to say they do officially support Mac for their MP3 players.; January 24, 2008 8:59 AM
januszjanusz said...: hi.I got Zen stone & intel macbook.So here's the deal: it shows as external usb drive in finder and as nomad in itunes. Through itunes the bad thing is you can't make folders, everything's in one, so it's kind of stupid. Now even more stupid story-when I move my music to Zen thru finder, often some files work and some not. They sound corrupted like you would listen them on fast forward mode. And it's funny, cos sometimes when I upload files they work for some time(let say till I turn it off) and then become corrupted. And the second issue with finder is that often when I plug it to mac, some files/folders are missing, they're just gone, like the process of connecting the player erases them. And all of this happen randomly but often, I mean everyday.
So my opinion is this - creative doesn't know what 'compatible' means or something's wrong with my player(however I discussed these problems with other users).

If you have any clue how to make it all work together, I would appreciate it very much.
peace; April 3, 2008 8:14 PM
ylloh said...: it could be some problem with the zen stone, did you just bought it? try these recovery mode http://www.mycreativefansite.com/2007/06/access-rescue-moderecovery-mode-on-zen.html

if it still does not work, i suggest you get it exchanged with your retailer; April 4, 2008 11:00 AM