Older iTunes Installs on Latests OS X’s

[GogoChipi]

Is there a program where I can have 2 iTunes installed on the OS X or can I uninstall the iTunes 12+ in a High Sierra and re-install an iTunes 9 or 10 instead? I don’t care about any iPhone or iPod syncing, I just want to use the old iTunes interface.

 

[Slydude]

I saw your other thread about running two different versions of the OS on one Mac. The suggestion was to run the second OS in a virtual machine. See Running 2 OS X’s Simultaneously on the Same Partition?

I'd apply the same logic to running two versions of iTunesRun the second version of iTunes in a virtual machine. Here's how I would approach things:

1. Install the most recent OS and the most recent version of iTunes onto the drive.
2. Create a virtual machine and install the older Mac OS and older iTunes into that.
3. You can put your iTunes library on an external drive and direct both copies of iTunes to the same drive. That way you don't have to have two copies of your music library. I haven't tried this last step personally but I'm 99% sure it works.

 

[GogoChipi]

How do you "direct both copies of iTunes to the same external drive"? I hate the interface of iTunes 11 and 12's so I experimented yesterday using AppZapper to dump iTunes versions and reinstall many earlier versions over-and-over again and they all work in any OS X version.

Any iTunes version after 10.3.1 you will get a nuisance error message popup in the beginning during program startup that says a missing component (-42401) needs to be installed and to update, but if you just ignore it's gone until the next startup. You will loose any syncing of devices ofcourse.

My aim here is to make Snow Leopard my main workstation with all of my music files in iTunes 10.0 and then install Capitan or any Sierra into the VM and use that updated iTunes to sync to my iPhone 12. But I don't think there is a VM that can be installed ontop of Snow Leopard unless you do know?

 

[IWT]

But I don't think there is a VM that can be installed ontop of Snow Leopard unless you do know?

I agree. I don't believe Snow Leopard supports such a thing - of course, could be wrong.

What I'm struggling with is whether you have just the one Mac or whether you have two. My uncertainty stems from comments in both your posts about "High Sierra", "El Capitan", "running Partitions", etc.

Snow Leopard (10.6.8) is roughly 10 versions behind the current and if I recall correctly, Apple's iCloud Services didn't start till 10.7.2. Consequently, I don't see how you hope to sync any version of iTunes to an iPhone 12.

How do you "direct both copies of iTunes to the same external drive"?

To answer your question:

Open iTunes > iTunes Preferences > Advanced > iTunes Media folder location - change to suit your needs.

My advice - take it or leave it is to reconsider your strategy from scratch. If we knew for certain whether it's one Mac or more and if only one is it Snow Leopard? and if two, what OS is the other running; we could do our best to get to a solution that suits your needs.

Ian

 

[GogoChipi]

how many Macs I have, I lost count lol counting now... 7 of them. I looove Snow Leopard, I think it was their best op still. I do care about clouding or syncing devices, this is going on a 2011 MBP as a workstation.

iTunes folder path seems easy enough. I would have VM'd a later OS X onto this setup and synced devices there, but I don't think VMWare or VirtualBox makes one for Snow Leopard, so I may be done with the VM idea.

 

[chscag]

iTunes folder path seems easy enough. I would have VM'd a later OS X onto this setup and synced devices there, but I don't think VMWare or VirtualBox makes one for Snow Leopard, so I may be done with the VM idea.

I can't speak to VMWare Fusion but I do remember using VirtualBox with Snow Leopard. Of course that was ages ago and I really don't know if you can still find an older version of VirtualBox. The VB forums might be of some help though:

virtualbox.org - Index page

forums.virtualbox.org

 

[GogoChipi]

when you were "using VirtualBox with Snow Leopard"' was that having SL as the Guest OS or was SL the base and you installed VB to use for something else?

 

[chscag]

Snow Leopard was the main operating system. VirtualBox was installed so that I could run a copy of Windows XP.

Later on I used Boot Camp to install Windows 7 on a 2011 iMac. Gave up on VirtualBox as it was difficult to use. VB has improved greatly since then.