I just bought my first Mac

[tattooedfay]

I just bought my first Mac. I've been using them at college this past semester, and when I decided I needed a laptop, I decided to go with Mac. I have a few silly questions, if you don't mind, though.

-Can I back up itunes from my old windows PC on to my Mac, so that way I have a copy of my music? How do I do this? I've got my music in a couple different folders on my PC...I need to consolidate them somehow. I've got instruction on how to back up to a cd, an external hard drive, and how to transfer using the ipod, but can't I just use an ethernet cable between the two, and copy that way?

-Do you have any reference sites or books that you recommend for a newbie like me?

-Any concerns with my ipod? It syncs currently to the PC, but I over heard someone say that if they tried to sync their ipod to a Mac, after they've synced it to a PC, that it will wipe the ipod. I don't know the person at all, so they could have been talking out of their bum for all I know, but I was curious as to how that works. I was thinking of using my pc as the back up, and the mac as my "itunes/ipod/iphone home base".

Well, that's it.....for now. I am sure I'll have alot of questions. I don't like feeling like a newb on computers, so I want to get everything settled asap.

Thanks in advance!
-Jo

 

[iPod Nano]

1. If you have a local network at home, you can just copy the files over that.
2. Nope, sorry,
Oh, I suggest mac-forums.com
3. Yes, that is correct. An iPod can only be synced to one computer at a time. Syncing on any computer (Windows or Mac) will wipe it clean of all previous data.

Welcome, I hope this helps!

 

[tattooedfay]

Thanks

One thing about #3, can I swap which computer it syncs too, once I back itunes up on the mac? Or is only syncable to the computer it was first attached to?

 

[dtravis7]

Amazon.com: Mac OS X Snow Leopard: The Missing Manual (9780596153281): David Pogue, Pogue David: Books

That is very helpful.

 

[yamawho]

Reference the iPod thing ...

iTunes is set to auto sync by default. If you go into preferences and select manual sync, it won't delete the songs. This way you can plug the iPod into different systems without losing songs. Again, this needs to be done on each computer.

 

[tattooedfay]

Thanks folks! I appreciate all your help!

 

[Zeptogram]

You can edit the library.xml file so that you can read it from OSX and then just bring over the music from your PC on CDs or an external hard drive. LifeHacker has a good how to right here. Hope it helps! (Or you could just copy over the files... That's only if you don't want to make a new library.)

Zep

 

[xstep]

A Google search came up with these two interesting sites.

About.com - Windows Switchers and New Mac Users
Basics4Mac
Switch to a Mac