Moving Itunes from PC to MAC - with an Ipad and Iphone

Hello gang, this is my first post on the forum.

I am switching to an IMAC 27 in a few weeks. I need info on how to move my 100gb PC-itunes Library to the MAC. I will be transferring of course the music/playlists/playcounts but I also will need to move ringtones, Iphone/Ipad Apps, books and Photos. Originally (on PC) all of this media is on an External drive. I would like to move this "media" to a NEW external drive that will be formated and dedicated to the MAC. I also hopefully will be able to avoid the fact that the switchover to the MAC will not cause my Iphone and Ipad to be treated as "NEW" and erase all of settings in those devices.

If anyone could help me out that would be great.

SAM

Digitial Sam said:

I also hopefully will be able to avoid the fact that the switchover to the MAC will not cause my Iphone and Ipad to be treated as "NEW" and erase all of settings in those devices.

Click to expand...

Nope, there's no way to avoid that. You are in fact hooking it up to a new device, so it will need to be wiped and re-synced. The trick, as you've noted, is to have the "old stuff" already on the new machine so all you have to do is re-sync and everything is right back where it was.

Photos go in iPhoto, all the rest of it goes in iTunes. Here's a guide on how to preserve everything:

iTunes: How to move your music to a new computer

Bottom line: just let Windows Migration Assistant handle it for you. You will be quite amazed at how painless it is.

And welcome to Mac (not MAC).

Thank you for the response, but I would prefer to move all of that data to different drives. My new IMac will have an internal SSD and a 2nd 1tb internal drive. The SSD will hold the OS and Apps. The 2nd drive will hold "My documents" and photos. A 3rd external drive will hold my iTunes media. A 4th external drive will be used for time machine of the 2nd and 3rd drives.

If the migration assistant would allow me to move the iTunes media to it's respective external drive, and of course keeping playlists and play counts, that would be great. But I am not sure if that can be configured as such.

I was pleasantly surprised that the migration assistant would move my Outlook email/data over as well.

Can't answer your question about iTunes migration with the assistant, but I just migrated a relative's iTunes library manually and got his iPad resyncing there following the online instructions I used when I did my own switch. it was quite straightforward, just slow waiting for copies to finish. Tricks I learned: make backups of everything first, do the simple itunes library consolidations before copying to external drive, set iTunes preferences to prevent iOs devices from auto syncing, and select transfer purchases from iTunes File menu and checking all the device sync tabs in itunes prior to syncing each iOS device. Spooky part was the message about erasing the device at first sync in the new location, but as chas says that merely replaces everything on the device with the same stuff, if iTunes library was moved methodically.

I migrated my extensive Outlook data, then within a month abandoned Outlook and am very happy with the native Apple apps. But I don't need Outlook in an enterprise setting, just me and my iMac, iPad and iPhone.