If you have updated the firmware in the Creative MuVo flash player to support FAT16 (and so allow easy reformatting under OS X) then you may have noticed that iTunes fails to detect the device. No matter how often I tried to add things like MuVo Helper or the ‘unreleased’ Nomad Plugin nothing happened.
What you need to do is throw caution to the wind, and HexEdit the iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/iTunes file to change the capitalisation of the strings that iTunes uses to match the MuVo. Beware – this could easily kill iTunes, and has only been tested on a MuVo 64MB model (blue and white, no display – DAP-TD0001).
For iTunes 4.7.1, the strings appear around byte 0x45a9d0 – use the search function on MuVo (ignore the case for ease of typing). Be careful not to add any extra characters, but change the first string from Nomad MuVo to NOMAD MUVO and then change the next string from CREATIVE to Creative. I used HexEdit’s Auto file open mode to take care of resource fork information, and simply saved the file out again.
Aaron "strayduck" Deutsch
GREAT post. I have confirmed that it works with the following two arrangements:
– PowerBook Pismo (with G4/500 processor upgrade) and iTunes 4.7.1 and a 256MB MuVo TX
– PowerMac G4/1Ghz and iTunes 4.7.1 and a 256MB MuVo TX
Before doing the procedure it might be good to go root on the command line and:
cd /Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/ and
cp iTunes iTunesOLD
…so you have a quick way to revert if you blow something up.
It looks like this problem may not have been intentional on Apple’s part (they did leave the code in, after all). They’ve probably just shifted their priorities to the iPod — interoperability gives them very little in the music realm. Hopefully the next version will officially fix this problem and we won’t have to do this every time a new version of iTunes comes out.
Ben
Ok, So I did not download this driver so that I may use Itunes or the likes. However my situation was in need of a flash upadate. Somehow my flash version has been 0.00 for nearly a year, hence it got formatted somehow. Thanks to this update I was able to reload the flash driver, and now I have a revived MuVo (128 MB). This has been my only MP3 player so I was quite happy to have MP3 back to portablity. I have tested I tunes on my XP machine and it works. I will try the Mac format in the morning to see what happens. Thanks again for this release!
joh
Just to add some info: The same trick works with iTunes 4.9 and a MuVo TX with 512MB (the newer ones). Why Apple hasn’t corrected this yet is beyond me.
Bad news for me is that iTunes just ignores all folders on the MuVo as well the files in those folders, it sees only MP3’s right in the root of the file system. Which is quite sobering because being able so organize files in folders (and being able to jump between folders/albums) is one of the nicer features of the MuVo TX. On the other hand, it’s hard to see how iTunes should support this, since it has no sense for folders anywhere…
Joost
A quick-and -dirty alternative for using hexedit: close iTunes, open Terminal.app and execute the following commands:
cd /Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS
cp iTunes iTunes.bak
cat iTunes.bak | sed ‘s/Nomad/NOMAD/;s/MuVo/MUVO/;s/CREATIVE/Creative/’ > iTunes
This leaves an extra newline character at the end of the file, but this doesn’t seem to bother iTunes…
llurands
Thank you,
this little iTunes mod helped me to use an old Muvo on the Mac, too. Has someone mailed this little problem to Apple? Meanwhile we have iTunes 6 and nothing changed…
Regards,
Lars
Chris
I have triesd it with itunes 6 and MuVo TX but no luck does anyone have any suggestions?
Toby
Just tried this now and works perfectly for my, albeit old, muvo 128 with itunes 6.
It’s small things like this that makes me suspect of apple and their ‘ease of use’ claims – all very good if all you ever do is eat/sleep/drink apple, but for those of us in the real world who like it’s another story…
spätbert
thanks a lot it works also very well with Creative MuVo TX 512 Mb and Itunes 6.04
i worried a long time about how i can easily access the music from my player within itunes
and was about givin up all hope 😉 cause i didn´t even find at least an applescript to do this for me
this advice saved my day 😀
ark0n3
i’m a recent switcher: OSX is GREAAAAT!!
until today i tought it would have been extremely simple to connect my muvo tx fm to osx, but when 10 minutes ago i attached it to the USB hub of my mac mini it wansn’t ever recognised.. after that i installed the muvo helper but nothing appened.. with the “sed” command i modified itunes but it doesn’t start anymore so i put in the right place the old itunes..
please help me :/ i want to use my muvo under osx..
ark0n3
i solved changing the muvo identification string to the one i found with the device manager..
thank you for the right direction!
barbara
😀
yes:it works with muvotx 1gb and itunes 6.0.5
but in fact it doesn’t recognize the folders ….
i’m happy “quand même”
PsP
Hello! So I did execute that command
“cd /Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS cp iTunes iTunes.bak cat iTunes.bak | sed ’s/Nomad/NOMAD/;s/MuVo/MUVO/;s/CREATIVE/Creative/’ > iTunes”
to the terminal.app, after i have don that the terminal says me this
“sed: 1: “’s/Nomad/NOMAD/”: invalid command code ?
usage: cp [-R [-H | -L | -P]] [-f | -i | -n] [-pv] src target
cp [-R [-H | -L | -P]] [-f | -i | -n] [-pv] src1 … srcN directory
-bash: s/MuVo/MUVO/: No such file or directory
-bash: s/CREATIVE/Creative/’: No such file or directory”
(I have iTunes 7) So what now, could some one help me???