is apple all it’s cracked up to be?

How hard should it be to figure out how to transfer MP3s from your Apple Powerbook to your non-iPod MP3 player? Apple has a reputation for intuitive user interfaces, and yet I cannot for the life of me determine how to get the songs off of the hard drive onto this Rio Cali. The computer recognizes the player, and it’s listed in the “Source List” in iTunes. And yet… how do you get this stuff over here onto that thing over there?

Does anyone know?

Update: This does not help. The songs will not drag and drop.

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6 thoughts on “is apple all it’s cracked up to be?

  1. Coincidence?!
    I don’t use MACs at all. I never see anything negative posted about MACs unless I search for “computer wars” flames.
    However, over the past couple of days I was trying to help my cousin at work with sending over some MAC files and fonts from a MAC CD–from a PC–not easy. I succeeded to a certain degree but just to be on the safe side that the fonts were OK, I suggested he take the CD home and try to compress the files on the CD on his Wife’s iMAC with Stuffit or Zip.
    He called me a bit before 10PM (which happens to be when “Is Apple all it’s cracked up to be?” message was posted,) and I tried to help him figure out how to create a Zip archive of 3 folders on the CD.
    We tried for like 20 minutes to no avail. His wife didn’t know either. There were instructions with the Zipit program–but didn’t make sense–he just couldn’t figure it out. I told him to drag and drop–but it didn’t respond as expected. In Windows that’s pretty easy and straightforward. He is pretty good with computers–uses a PC daily. We both were astounded at how difficult it is to figure it out and he was deeply frustrated. In fact as we were speaking I was anxiously trying to find an old MAC emulator as I wanted to try it myself. I kept thinking for the rest of the evening about “steep learning curve” and spent more time looking for and fooling with some MAC emulator as I thought maybe I could try it and get it done here.
    Later, at around midnight I happened to catch a glimpse of the Larry King show. He was discussing John Ritter’s death and the 8 rules TV show–I guess it was a taped show.
    So I took a look on the web to see when he died–I didn’t hear of it when it happened–Sept. 11, 2003. Made me pretty sad–what a great actor–and I heard on the show he was also a great guy.
    Today, I looked through an article I still had on the screen from last night about his life and death, and it mentioned he was divorced–so I wanted to find out why–as I heard he was such a fun guy–did he divorce his wife or vice-versa.
    So I search Google, and find this G.H.W. website where there’s a post about it. The website looks interesting, so I decide to check out the main page–so as soon as I go there–I see this post from George about the MAC being confusing! “Coincidence-Synchronicity” Again?
    Here’s a link to The Infinite Mind radio show–where they recently had a show about Coincidence/Synchronicity! They still have the Real Audio file available.
    http://lcmedia.com/mindprgm.htm
    http://lcmedia.com/rafiles/tim301.ram
    TekWiz.

  2. Jeff, we did that. Still not working. :-(
    TekWiz, thanks for the narrative about how you came to this post. One of the most interesting things about being the author of a blog is being able to tell, sometimes, how someone came by something you wrote. Rarely, however, does a reader provide as much detail as you did.

  3. George,
    Did you ever figure out how to transfer the files? I ask because I had a similar issue with Palm and Audible books. Turns out that Audible is not compatible with Palm and Mac, even though they claimed to be. They have changed their website finally.
    I teach at East Carolina University, but also serve as the Apple Campus Rep. I would be glad to assist you if the problem still exists.
    By the way, I stumbled on your site since we just announced that your provost, Steve Ballard, will be our new chancellor in June.
    Cheers.

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