iTunes/iPod syncing
 

Ok, I did a search on here and didn't come up with the answer to this one, so here goes and my apologies if it has previously been answered. I am PC desktop based now, with iTunes installed. I have an iPod shuffle which I love. My new company that I am consulting for works with Apples, so I will be purchasing a new MacBook very shortly here along with an iPod that will hold all my songs :) . (I want to get the U2 Edition one!)

My question is, when I get my new Apple and iPod, of course I will sync the iPod to load it with my iTunes on my PC. When I plug it into my MacBook, will it sync all of the songs on it to there as well? I would love for it to be able to do that, as I will then load new CD's into iTunes on my MacBook.

Hope this makes sense and I look forward to the answer.

Thanks,
FlyboyHNL

P.S. I have very limited expereince with Macs, so am excited about my MacBook when I get it!

When it syncs, it only moves music from your computer to your iPod, not v.v. So music you 'sync up' from your PC, will not 'sync down' to your Mac.

With that said, when syncing with 2 different computers (or 2 different iPods to one computer for that matter), its best to just do it manually. Make sure the "autmomatically sync" option in your iTunes on each computer is turned off.

To move music from your iPod to your computer, you'll need some 3rd party software. I've used PodUtil for some time now.

Plenty of information on this and related iPod topics at www.ipodlounge.com.

Related trivia...

You can have music purchased from the iTunes Music Store loaded on up to 5 computers at once. If you will be leaving your old PC behind, be sure to de-authorize it, so that that computer is no longer counted as one of your 5 machines.

Your best bet is to copy your iTunes Library over to the new MacBook directly from the PC or burn a Data disc from the PC and take them off that. When you try to use iTunes to automatically synch from a second computer it will wipe all the songs off the iPod and then synch from the ones you've selected on the new computer.

Thanks everyone!
 

Thanks everyone! I knew I could count on my fellow FT's as I always do.

AQ,
FlyboyHNL

I was in much the same position (Windows user who bought a MacBook). I copied my music collection over to the MacBook (it will read a Windows XP NTFS partition) and then exported my playlists as .txt files.

Then fired up my MacBook, imported all the songs and then imported all the playlists and then connected my Nano. Worked like a charm.

Thankfully you can reset your authorization list so if you ever do run into the limit it's not too much of a pain to fix that.

Hmm, after reading more it is a bit limited due to the once-a-year constraint: "If you have authorized five computers, a button labeled "Deauthorize All" will appear in your Account Information screen. This button will deauthorize all computers associated with your account. You can then reauthorize up to 5 computers. Note: You can only use this feature once a year."

Here's my situation: I just everything re-installed on my laptop, so it's like a new computer (new hard disk, new software from windows up). I've downloaded and installed iTunes on my laptop again, and now I'm ready to start syncing the iPod again/purchasing music, etc. Are these assumptions/ideas correct?

- I cannot "download" my music from iPod to laptop
- If I attempt to sync, it will wipe my iPod clean and make it match the new iTunes folder
idea- I may have copied my music to the hard disk portion of my iPod. What if...
1) copy music from iPod hard drive to new folder on desktop, 2) drag and drop those songs into iTunes, then 3) sync iPod with iTunes.

Will those 3 steps work? Anything easier? Thanks, Ken.

Use something that will allow you to export your music from the iPod- Yamipod, for example.

Something I don't understand about iPod use
 

This is slightly OT, but didn't seem worth a new thread.

I think I understand that if I get an iPod, I need to install iTunes and use that to install music on the iPod (I run WinXP Pro SP2). I was hoping that once I'd downloaded to the iPod, I could delete those music files from my laptop's hard drive (since, over time, they would use a lot of memory). From what I've been reading, though, it sounds as every time I go to download new files to the iPod, I would lose the music files that I'd deleted from the iTunes file.

This sounds weird to me. Do I really have to keep all those "old" music files on my computer forever?

Tennisbum, you can change the synching to manual and delete your computer files after they have been added to the ipod. Just make sure you don't have the music set to automatically synch. ("edit""preferences""ipod")

TravelManKen, yes, that should work. I did that and used "file" "add folder to library" when I got a new computer.

I had the same thoughts when I first got my iPod--I was too afraid to delete everything off the hard drive when I'd synched up, even though I have the original CDs, just because it'd be such a pain to re-rip *everything* if anything ever did happen to the copy of the library on the iPod.

I finally broke down and got a small, cheap, external hard drive that I use for the library. I don't have to worry about accessing it unless I'm ripping a new CD, and I don't have to worry about hogging up 60GB of "regular" space on my machine with yet another copy of music that I already have both the source CD and iPod copies of.

Slightly wasteful and redundant, probably, but it made me happy.

Ooh thanks for this, nerd! I had been running iTunes on my work computer which crashed hard (and never came back up :( ) last week.

Among the carnage on said hard drive, hundreds of downloaded songs (which are NOT on my iPod right now). :( :( :( When I originally set up my iTunes account, I was on my old personal computer. Any chance that if I fire up that computer, I can re-download all the songs I've bought over the past year or so? Or am I SOL since I didn't authorize that computer from my work computer?

Perfect! ^ Everything is back on both systems, the only thing I have to do now is recreate my playlists.