Tired of playing Metal Gear Acid or Lumines on the PSP? Then why not fire up iTunes?

Infomation Appliance Associates (IAA) said Wednesday that it has ported its PocketMac software to the Sony PSP handheld game console, allowing users to sync their OS X address books, view their iPhotos, or listen to their iTunes playlists on the PSP, which is quickly becoming a platform for third-party software development.

In addition to the exploit allowing users to browse the Web from their PSP, a group of developers is being organized to port a version of the Linux operating system to the console.

The software, available for download for just $9.95 from the IAA web site, uses either a standard USB cable or a Sony Memory Stick flash card to load the software, videos, and music.

A user's contact information is saved as an image file onto the PSP, allowing the user to save and port the information to the console. The software supports both Microsoft Entourage and the Apple OS X contact system.

The software works with the iPod playlist but does not decode files encoded in the AAC format, according to Tim Goggin, vice president of marketing for the company. "Basically we sync the music behind it," he said. "There's no iTunes built on the PSP. We want to avoid the issue of copyrighted music; it's not a hassle we really want to go into."

That makes the software similar to iPSP and PSPWare, two other "integration" products on the market.

In January, Apple reported sales of 4,580,000 iPods during the fourth quarter ended Dec. 25, 2004, a 525 percent increase from the same period a year ago. Although the iPod is based on a hard drive, the PSP software would allow Sony's device to compete with the Apple Shuffle, a flash-based MP3 player. Only the iPod can play AAC-encoded files, however.

Apple iPod Shuffles sell for $99 and $149 for a 512-Mbyte and 1-Gbyte Shuffle, respectively. A 1-Gbyte Memory Stick costs about $105, while a 2-Gbyte model is priced at about $250, plus shipping. A 512-Mbyte Memory Stick Duo retails for about $125. A Sony PSP retails for $249.99.

Correction:A previous version of this story cited incorrect prices for Memory Stick flash cards..

Copyright © 2005 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in ExtremeTech.