Hi,

My wife finally decided to treat herself to a new style iPod Nano, and it arrived yesterday.

Unfortunately when connected to our Mac a message popped up saying it only works with OS X 10.4.8 and we only have 10.3.9

Cue much dissapointment and wondering why they did this.

Does anybody know of a way around this (without having to upgrade)?

I have looked at a couple of other applications but they all seem to require that you connect to iTunes first.

Cheers
Stu.

I regret to say that you are out of luck and will need to upgrade to Tiger or Leopard in order for the new Nanos (or any of the new iPods) to work. There is no clear answer on whether this is an intentional move on Apples behalf or one of incompatibility (the iPods/iTunes relationship may require a framework within Tiger for instance).

You can pick up Tiger fairly cheaply these days if that is any consolation. Or go the illegal route via bit torrent.

This might be a good time to upgrade your OS.. to OS X 10.5 Leopard in 9 days time.

Complain to apple and see what they say?

I'd love too - unfortunately our iMac is a G4 800, which is below the recommended requirements.

Maybe I should aim for a new Mac instead

Any tips or link to a good cheap source? Briefly looking on ebay they didn't seem such a bargain compared to new.

Find yourself a student and buy it from Apple with student discount. The discount is quite higher for Tiger than it is for Leopard. I think I paid around £40 for mine

Go on a pc and install the setup file for the ipod and restore the settings to the PC, it'll then work with your mac without upgrading the OS.