The daughter has a MacBook, I dunno, maybe 3 years old. She’s running 10.3.9 on it.
The boyfriend gave her a new Nano for Jesus’ birthday. She tells me she’s had trouble with I-tunes since whatever the newest cat version is that came out.
The other day, she tries to sync the Nano and her MacBook. She gets an error message that says she has to be running at least 10.4.x to run I-tunes and sync the Nano.
Problem 1: Huh? I can run any I-Pod and any I-Tunes version on any PC based computer. But I can’t run an Apple Product on an Apple notebook unless I buy new software which I might have to buy a new computer for? THAT is wrong.
She’s been on the phone with the Apple help group for 30 minutes before finally tossinig her cell phone away, swearing and running upstairs.
Solutions? Is there any other, more simple way to get a seemingly simple thing like this done?
Short of buying a a newer version of OS X?
I’m not a mac user, let’s make that clear. But… Try an older version of iTunes?
The reason behind the restrictive hardware isn’t to force people to upgrade (although that may be a factor), but simply to solve most hardware incompatibility issues.
Limit the available hardware, and build the software around that set, and the problems are minimized.
Annoying. Yes.
I think you are making an incorrect assumption.
From here: iPod nano (4th generation) - Technical Specifications it says that the newest Nano requires iTunes 8 or later, regardless of Mac or Windows.
True, but I’d be willing to bet that iTunes 8 doesn’t demand the user purchase a copy of Windows Vista. 
No, it requires XP SP2 or later.
On the Mac it requires 10.4.9 or later.
So, on both platforms it supports the two latest major OS versions.
10.3.9 is really ancient.
This doesn’t add up. No MacBook is more than 2.5 years old, since the MacBook Pro was first introduced in May 2006. Second, no MacBook can run 10.3.9. Your daughter probably has a PowerBook or iBook, which will run 10.4 and can be obtained relatively cheaply. If she does in fact have a MacBook, something weird is going on as 10.4.6 is the earliest version of the OS she could possibly run.
As beowulff mentioned, 10.3.9 is an old version of the OS and is akin to running Windows 2000 on a PC. There’s really no way around this other than updating Mac OS X.
Right, it’s not a MacBook, it’s another “Book”.
She also has quite the generous Poppa. She was getting a brand spanking new laptop for her college graduation this spring. We agreed to just bump the delivery up by a few months.
Problem solved.