02-26-2007, 12:20 PM

Hi ya guys! Just want to check with you before I suggest sumpthin' stoopid to a friend. I have no experience with synching an iPod on two different Macs. Not only that but I am used to synching with a .Mac account and songs that were bought from the iTMS.

A friend of mine bought for his gf an iPod Nano and he doesn't have a .Mac account and all the tunes are supposed to be transfered from CDs that the gf already owns or vinyls sent to the Mac and sent then to the iPod Nano.

I know that with a .Mac account, with songs bought from the iTMS, you can allow up to 5 computers to use the tunes. What happens with ordinary songs coming from CDs and vinyls?

What I am trying to get at is this: he wants to partially transfer the songs from his work place and from his home so he can get the collection uploaded to the iPod faster and save time (birthday is coming up). He started uploading songs from work but when he got home to go on uploading another stack of tunes, the only choice he had in iTunes was to delete the contents of the iPod and start over.

Can he synch from two different Macs (the one at home and the one at work) without having to delete the iPod's contents each time? Or would a workaround be that he has on both Macs the same iTunes content on both machines?

If the latter, it would make the whole synching from the two different Macs pretty tedious and he just might be better off to synch just from home or work but not try to save time by using two different Macs...

What do you think about this?

I hope I'm clear here...

Thank you all in advance for any ideas. :girl:

02-26-2007, 12:51 PM

As far as I know you can only sync your iPod with a single version of iTunes at any time.

I guess he could stick it in disk drive mode and copy the stuff from one of machines to the other and then use the machine with largest collection to sync with iPod.

02-26-2007, 12:53 PM

Oh:

Can I update my iPod from more than one computer?

In the official company FAQ, Apple reports that:

Yes. When you first connect iPod to your computer, iPod recognizes that computer as its "home" computer. Each time you connect, iPod automatically downloads the music library stored on it. When you connect iPod to a different computer, iTunes will inform you that iPod is linked to a different iTunes library and will ask whether you wish to erase iPod's contents and sync with the new computer's library.

If you will be connecting to multiple computers frequently, configure your iPod to manually manage music. This will allow you to selectively drag songs, albums, or playlists from the second computer to your iPod without compromising the existing music.

Apple Article: using iPod with multiple computers

02-26-2007, 05:57 PM

Excellent, Dave! Thank you very much! I will forward the info!