I recently bought an iPod Shuffle to use with my Powerbook G4 (10.3.9), and was a bit distressed to discover that said iPod was not recognized by my Mac! A dialog box would inform me that I had attached a disk in a format that OS X could not read, and was gave the options of Initializing or Ignoring it. I tried both. iTunes would recognize the Shuffle if I initialized it, but then demanded I restore it. Once the restoration process was complete, the iPod would vanish from the source list, never to be seen again. Meanwhile, it was sitting in the dock flashing its amber LED in a futile "Don't unplug me yet!" plea.
The really frustrating part was that the iPod worked just fine on a PC. In this thread on Apple's Discussion site, toonz suspected I had a FAT32 recognition issue, and suggested I do an archive reinstall of OS X, and after all the system updates, my Shuffle worked...
...until this evening when I plugged in my Lexar Mercury USB thumbdrive and installed the Secure II vault encryption software. Once again, my Mac refused to acknowledge his iPod relative, and my poor shunned little Shuffle went back to sorrowfully blinking his amber light.
Setting out on a mission as some technology conflict mediator (aka hit man), I searched through the Secure II installation packages. The culprit turned out to be an extension called LexarFilterScheme.kext (but it might go by "Bubba" in some circles). It resides at /System -> Library -> Extensions -> LexarFilterScheme.kext. Thankfully, by deleting (aka whacking) this file, my Pbook and iPod are buddies again. Enemy neutralized, mission accomplished. I don't need an encrypted vault on a thumbdrive anyway ... I just wish I had figured this out before I reinstalled.
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20070119211646338