The Sony PSP and Apple...

As soon as I saw the Sony PSP, I fell in love with it. I know, you may get a laugh out of this, but as a geek at heart, any neat gadget really gets my attention. And the PSP was great! I had to have one, and a few months ago, when an upcoming trip to India gave me reason to shell out the money, I bought my PSP. I purchased the Giga Pack, which Sony was promoting as a great deal: the PSP, a carry case, a 1GB Memory Stick Duo card. I also wound up pickup up a couple games (for your information, Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories and Syphon Filter, both excellent games in my opinion).

In the time I've had my PSP, several friends have suggested that I mod it, but I didn't want to go that route, because I just don't find any advantage to free gaming, if I need to get memory cards to store these games. But my concern has come with my platform of choice, OS X. Since the PSP has USB connectivity, the thought that both devices would be fully compatible did cross my mind!!!

For those who are not aware, the PSP is compatible, in a sense, with OS X. It is possible to browse the PSP once connected and mounted, but unfortunately, it is not possible to properly format and delete data. I imagine that this is due to some restrictions based on write format, but no matter. There are several solutions that have cropped up, and here are a few of them:

1. PSP Ware: In my opinion, PSP Ware, by Nullriver Software, is by far the best solution available for OS X users. Once installed, PSP Ware allows a Mac user to sync their PSP with their Mac. Users are able to select music from their iTunes library, images from their iPhoto library, convert movie files and DVD to PSP format, sync bookmarks from Safari, backup saved games and more. This application also allows users to manager multiple memory sticks, simply and securely. This application currently sells for $15.00 and is up to version 2.5.1.

2. iPSP: iPSP by RnSK Softronics provides the same type of functionality as PSP Ware above, although it also includes some features that can make it very useful in conjunction with a "modded" PSP. The ability to sync homebrew applications is a great feature, as well as some advanced file management options make this a worthy competitor to PSP Ware.

Of course, for those who do not want or need an all in one solution, there are several applications that can be used to extract, rip and compress video to PSP standards. Most of these tools work very quickly on the OS X platform, and based on your specific requirements, may suit your needs better than the two proposed programs listed above.

Explore and have fun!