a few questions from an Apple noobie

Ive never really used a mac before in fact I just got a fairly new desktop.

anyway I currently am debating on purchasing a g4 laptop 1ghz with 1gb of memory superdrive airport, whatever all that good stuff

I was wondering if I have my ipod setup on my windows xp desktop will I still be able to use it with the mac and back n forth between them?

also,

there is no OS on this computer, and i was getting all amped up after watching the leopard features and etc. it looks like its a bit above the min req. 867mhz 512mb, but will it still run it well? im not looking to use time machine so much, if at all as well as a few other features.


thanks...

Leopard will work on your machine, altough if you could upgrade the RAM to 1.5GBs or better, you'd get better performance. Alternatively, Tiger is still a great OS.

You can use an iPOD on more than machine at a time, however I am not sure if you can use a FAT32 formatted iPOD on a Mac and still get syncing to work. Someone else might be able to verify that.

Leopard will make it on the Laptop. Powerbook?

As far as the iPod, it will only sync with one library. It will have to be re-formatted for the Mac. So you won't be able to go back and forth with it.

As far as iTunes, you can have up to 5 computers authorized to use the same iTunes account. You can sync the iPod with any of them. The only catch will be with the library. Downloading a song onto one machine will not automatically put it on the others. However, you will be able to download the song to one machine and then manually copy it to the others. If you can network the machines together, it's really easy, otherwise to can use a USB drive, email, etc.

yes i believe its the powerbook.

thats right i forgot about the sweet network music sharing in itunes i think thatll be fine.

i also had another question. I got all stoked about leopard being only 129 as compared to windows and etc.

however I heard the updates that come out fairly often are not free. If I buy the newest version of leopard am I going to be sucked into having to drop another $100 + in a few months maybe even less than a year? cause im still in school / working full time and yeah, thats startin to get pricey....

I also was looking to run CS3 on this laptop and it looks like itll make it any thoughts on how well photoshop / flash will run i use those most...

sorry about starting this in wrong section too!(initially)

thaanks your guys responses are helpful and fast.

imnothardcore said:

however I heard the updates that come out fairly often are not free. If I buy the newest version of leopard am I going to be sucked into having to drop another $100 + in a few months maybe even less than a year? cause im still in school / working full time and yeah, thats startin to get pricey....

.

Click to expand...

No, that's a Windows Fanboy myth. First of all, the updates within an OS are free (10.5.0 to 10.5.1 to 10.5.2 etc). It's only when you move to 10.6 that you'll have to pay again, and that's only if you want to. In terms of cost...

10.0 (March 2001) - $129
10.1 (Sept 2001) - Free (Essentially a big patch!)
10.2 (Aug 2002) - $129
10.3 (Oct 2003) - $129
10.4 (April 2005) - $129
10.5 (Oct 2007) - $129

Assuming you bought them all, for more than one machine, that's $650 for 5 licenses or $500 for a single license. However you could easily have skipped a release.

In the same time, to get equal functionality, you'd have to buy WinXP Professional retail and Vista Ultimate, costing $630 for a single license.

imnothardcore said:

thats right i forgot about the sweet network music sharing in itunes i think thatll be fine.

Click to expand...

Note that itunes shared library feature will allow you to use one computer to stream (listen to) the music on another, but it won't allow you to download it to the ipod. You will need to manually keep the library on the second computer up to date if you wish to sync the ipod to both machines.

Incidentally, I copied my entire itunes library from my Mac to a new installation of XP on a PC yesterday. I copied the entire Mac itunes library into the shared folder of the PC. From within itunes on the PC I selected File > Import and pointed it to the shared folder. Once I authorized my account on the PC, the ipod could sync to either machine. But if I add any additional songs to one, I will have to manually import them to the other.

sounds good, i think im good to go with this then, any thoughts on the cs3?

Zoolook said:

No, that's a Windows Fanboy myth. First of all, the updates within an OS are free (10.5.0 to 10.5.1 to 10.5.2 etc). It's only when you move to 10.6 that you'll have to pay again, and that's only if you want to. In terms of cost...

10.0 (March 2001) - $129
10.1 (Sept 2001) - Free (Essentially a big patch!)
10.2 (Aug 2002) - $129
10.3 (Oct 2003) - $129
10.4 (April 2005) - $129
10.5 (Oct 2007) - $129

Assuming you bought them all, for more than one machine, that's $650 for 5 licenses or $500 for a single license. However you could easily have skipped a release.

In the same time, to get equal functionality, you'd have to buy WinXP Professional retail and Vista Ultimate, costing $630 for a single license.

Click to expand...

And you don't have to buy them all. This would be like buying...

Windows 98
Windows 2000
Windows ME
Windows XP
Windows Vista

For now I'm sticking with XP and have no intention of "upgrading" to Vista.

Jaygray said:

For now I'm sticking with XP and have no intention of "upgrading" to Vista.

Click to expand...

agreed.

Jaygray said:

And you don't have to buy them all. This would be like buying...

Windows 98
Windows 2000
Windows ME
Windows XP
Windows Vista

For now I'm sticking with XP and have no intention of "upgrading" to Vista.

Click to expand...

In some ways yes, but Win2K and WinME were different paths. You would either go

Win95 -> Win98 -> WinME -> WinXP -> Vista

or

NT4 -> Win2K -> WinXP -> Vista

Some people jumped from Win9x to Win2K, but most followed one of the above. Anyone with half a brain would have skipped WinME too, and gone from 98 to XP.

Soulwar said:

As far as the iPod, it will only sync with one library. It will have to be re-formatted for the Mac. So you won't be able to go back and forth with it.

Click to expand...

Wrong. Whilst you can only sync with one library at a time, your Mac doesn't care which format your iPod has, HFS+ or FAT32 (in fact the iPod shuffle is always FAT32).

thanks alot you guys have really helped me out.

what can i say i guess im gonna buy this computer today and come over to the dark side...haha, youve pretty much talked me into it, Probably buy leopard within a couple weeks (will take a week to catch up on the amount dropped on laptop)

but yeah look for my dumb new apple questions comin in over the next few weeks... haha

thanks again!

Aptmunich said:

Wrong. Whilst you can only sync with one library at a time, your Mac doesn't care which format your iPod has, HFS+ or FAT32 (in fact the iPod shuffle is always FAT32).

Click to expand...

While this is true you can not update an iPod on a Mac that's formatted for windows. You can sync all you want, but not install new software

Dysfunction said:

While this is true you can not update an iPod on a Mac that's formatted for windows. You can sync all you want, but not install new software

Click to expand...

Yup
True dat!

Dysfunction said:

While this is true you can not update an iPod on a Mac that's formatted for windows. You can sync all you want, but not install new software

Click to expand...

So say my iPod is Windows based. If I plug it into my Mac can I still manage files on my iPod? (It's on manually manage files) Or will I have to reformat it to Mac, and re-add everything. I want it to work on my Mac for sure, because it is what I will have at school. It doesn't auto sync with any library.

ogacon said:

So say my iPod is Windows based. If I plug it into my Mac can I still manage files on my iPod? (It's on manually manage files) Or will I have to reformat it to Mac, and re-add everything. I want it to work on my Mac for sure, because it is what I will have at school. It doesn't auto sync with any library.

Click to expand...

Are you referring to adding music w/ iTunes or using it as a USB drive?

Adding music. Can I hook it up to my Windows, and drag from library to iPod, then to Mac and do the same thing... If I could, I really wouldn't need to wipe my whole iPod and then transfer it over just to reload it all again.

I honestly have no idea how either of my ipods are formatted. (They're not with me here right now.) It's whatever they came with from Apple. I have two separate itunes libraries--one on a Mac and one on a PC. I can use the same ipod on either one without a problem.

It wouldn't make sense for Apple to send out ipods which needed to be reformatted to work on one OS or the other. Remember that when you bought your ipod, Apple didn't know that you were going to use it on a PC instead of a Mac. They have to work on both right out of the box.

Alright... But I think it auto-formats when you first plug it in. Cause I think I remember plugging it into my friend's mac and it saying it wasn't compatible and needed to be reformatted. Maybe it works if you format it for Mac and it will work on Windows, but if you format it Windows it won't work on Mac? Or is there a way around this?