I don’t know what version of Parallels it was but it was the current version at that time. It worked fine and I suspect it would work with VMWare Fusion too.

Hi James,

I came across your post from last year regarding running your Zune on a Macbook Pro with Parallels. I was wondering, what version of Parallels Desktop were you using? Were you able to get your Zune to sync?

Grateful for any info. There’s not much on the web about people trying to use a Zune on a Mac…

Jeff

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bluemonq, it’s running Vista Ultimate under Parallels.

Hrmm, rest of my comment got cut off. Here it is:

Because if XP is being virtualized, then that clears everything up, doesn’t it?

1) Zune works fine for you in Windows XP
2) Zune breaks with your Fujitsu running Vista
3) Zune works fine with your MBP, which is running Windows XP as a virutal machine.

James, I might have missed something, but on your MBP, what version of Windows is being virtualized, Vista or XP?

OMG!! What a mess! Drivers? Chipsets? DRM? For crying out loud! You’d think that the Zune team at Microsost would at least do lunch once with the Vista team to make sure that one works with the other! This is classic Microsoft. All of this nonsense about the problem being with the P1610. All can say is that, after spending six billion dollars on Vista development, at least Microsoft would have made sure stuff works with their so-callled “PC Partners”. Let’s here it for Apple’s vertical integration strategy!

So the virtual machine solution returned you to your Zune Zen. Thanks to virtualization, the computing world is no longer flat. You don’t have to choose sides. Keep your Macbook. Keep your Zune. Send Parallels a Thank You card and sleep well.

“I had a unique problem where one machine couldn’t browse the marketplace. AT ALL. Turns out it was because even though I joined our old NT 4 domain at work, somehow it didn’t give the domain user I was logging on proper privileges. If I’d log on as a local and not domain user, then the Zune store would work. Wacky.”

Not really so wacky or inexplicable — this is a rather mundane firewall issue, of the type responsible for probably upwards of 90% of instances of things online not working in a corporate setting.

That’s….weird. I haven’t heard of that happening to anyone yet. What kind of audio chipset does the 1610 have? So far I’ve installed the Zune software on my Dell at home (vista pre-installed), a T60p (vista business) and the odd ball, a Mac Pro running Vista 64-bit (Realtek audio). So far all of them have worked flawlessly.

Well…I can’t say flawlessly. I had a unique problem where one machine couldn’t browse the marketplace. AT ALL. Turns out it was because even though I joined our old NT 4 domain at work, somehow it didn’t give the domain user I was logging on proper privileges. If I’d log on as a local and not domain user, then the Zune store would work. Wacky.

I second the first comment. I have yet to try under the very latest release, but under the last update Apple did, the iPod performed WORSE. I first hooked it up and it says “optimizing 1 of 233 photos” 2 min later…. “optimizing 2 of 233 photos”….2 min later. Finally I unpluggd the thing in frustration.

“Ed, points well taken but according to the Zune tech support rep the P1610 (or any other hardware) should not be able to stream music nor sync it properly to the Zune player without also being able to play it on the P1610 itself.”

If that’s what your Zune tech rep said, then I’m afraid that he led you badly astray. Streaming music and syncing music does not require an audio driver, because it’s identical to streaming or syncing any other kind of file (and in fact the streamer or the syncer does not even have to know that it is working with audio).

Playing back, however, does require an audio driver. Thus, your problem did not even require much troubleshooting to identify (certainly not 20 hours!). It is clear that the problem is with the audio driver on your P1610.

Your tech support guy was a ringer. He had no clue what he was talking about. This is especially evidenced by the fact that he started accepting YOUR theories, based on the popular buzz about a product rather than any technical principle (through no fault of your own, you’re not the tech support guy), and HE just says ‘Maybe so…’?

This guy doesn’t have a clue about anything, sorry to say. Ed Bott is right. The Zune might be useful to you, but you had what is probably a minor issue that should have been answered with a simple ‘Wait for Fujitsu to patch their Vista audio driver’ and got screwed into a hole by tech support.

This happens often with many companies. So I suggest you double-check anything said by a corporate stooge with a local geek who isn’t eager to get you off the phone.