ipod use with both windows and mac?

[thekid055]

I've read a few posts where people mentioned formatting the ipod drive so that windows can handle it. Does this mean you could only use the ipod with system only...mac or windows!?!?

I'm planning on getting an ipod and pb in the next couple of weeks. So all my music is on windows. So is it possible to upload files from windows and mac to the same ipod?

[PARTICLE]

Nope. You will have to decide which computer you'll want to dock the ipod to. You can always network the Mac and PC to get the files to the Mac. I am still having trouble making them go the other way though. Maybe it's not possible?

[Lobo]

I'm kinda in the same situation and when I asked, someone on here told me that formatting it in fat32 would allow you to atleast use it as a portable harddrive with both windows and mac.

[Nspace]

Yeah i just got mine, and since my Powerbook is my first mac, all my music was on my pc. Since my pc is hooked up my sound system, it made more sense to just keep it there. I formated for fat32 on the Windows machine and sync the ipod there.

It works fine as a portable drive on the mac, just make sure you click no when iTunes launches. It will bring up a msg about the ipod being from another iTunes library and if you want it to sync with this library. Well of course that will erase all of your current data, put whatever you have on the mac library in its place. Once that has happened in the preferences you can have it mount in disk mode i think the option is. then in the ufture when plugged in it will just mount on the desktop as another drive.

But yeah its too bad that it wont sync all tracks from the ipod to the mac, and any new tracks on the mac, to the ipod, and the same for pc. Would make it way more friendly for multi-computer use.

[PARTICLE]

I prefer to dock it to the mac. For some reason, the mac has no problem ripping the newer cds I have bought with copy protection, whereas I just can't seem to get by it on a windows machine, even with that "hold shift" trick.

Like I said before, creating a workgroup on the pc and sharing the folder or the drive with your music on it is easy for moving the music to the mac on a network. Until some genius comes up with a perfect Soulseek client for macs that's what I'm doing.

[mj_1903]

For some reason Apple does not ship all iPod's as Fat32 (the old DOS file system generally used on devices). I think its because Fat32 does not support some characters that HFS does.

Basically this means that an iPod on Mac OS X will not appear on a Windows machine but an iPod on Windows will appear on a Mac. If you want to rip your songs from your PC iPod to your Mac, I would advise getting iPodRip or Podworks (I write the former). There is no need to move it to the Mac though, although personally I feel it is safer on the Mac.

As Nspace pointed out, you will want to hit no when plugging the iPod into the Mac as iTunes is very effective at removing those songs from the iPod. You can also disable the dialog one time by pressing Command-Option from memory.

[Natalia81]

Originally Posted by Nspace

It works fine as a portable drive on the mac, just make sure you click no when iTunes launches. It will bring up a msg about the ipod being from another iTunes library and if you want it to sync with this library. Well of course that will erase all of your current data, put whatever you have on the mac library in its place. Once that has happened in the preferences you can have it mount in disk mode i think the option is. then in the ufture when plugged in it will just mount on the desktop as another drive.

But yeah its too bad that it wont sync all tracks from the ipod to the mac, and any new tracks on the mac, to the ipod, and the same for pc. Would make it way more friendly for multi-computer use.

I don't have an iPod yet, but have wanted one for the longest time. So I really don't know much about the technical aspect of them. I just thought you could upload/download files from mac (or pc) like it was a hard drive. I didn't know that it had to be sync'd up with you iTunes. So now I have a million and 1 questions:
So what happens if your system crashes and your iTunes library is gone? Are you just effed and have to start all over again, never being able to sync up you iPod?

Does it only try to sync up if itunes recognizes that it's not of the same library? How does it determine that...by matching the songs on the ipod with the ones in your library? If so, that could take forever, especially if you rename songs or add a new song to itunes?

i didn't realize how complicated (/user unfriendly) it is...it's making me rethink the whole ipod thing now...

[Riot_Mac]

I have a friend who has his ipod formatted for windows and we hooked it up to my mac with out any problems. You can use a windows formatted ipod on both mac and pc but you can only use a mac formatted ipod on a mac.

[DJY]

Originally Posted by Riot_Mac

I have a friend who has his ipod formatted for windows and we hooked it up to my mac with out any problems.

I agree!
I was a PC user when I got my 3G 40GB iPod and it worked well...
then when I finally saw the light and switched in June - I actually used my iPod as the main transfer (like external HDD) for all my data...

when everything was over - and I was on my new 17" PB as I plugged iPod in and iTunes detected it and wanted to know if I now wanted this computer to sync with it... I said yes.

Only hiccup - and one I haven't solved yet - is it has duplicated my contacts!?!
Thought it might have something to do with the different file systems - but when I view it on PC only see one set...
haven't worked out how to look behind the scenes yet via my PB.

[brevhead]

i've got a 2G windows ipod and i've also got a G4 ibook. I have the ibook networked up to my other two pc's (was so easy to do - pretty much plug and play) and if i have mp3s on my ibook that i want on my ipod, i just pull them accross the network to my pc (find it easier to do all the moving of files from my pc). I can then easily put them on my ipod.

I also like the feature of sharing your itunes playlists as i have my decent speakers hooked up to my pc. iI just switch both my ibook and pc on - share itunes and i can see all my mp3 from both machines on one of them. The only annoying thing is, you can't drag mp3s from one machine to another using itunes, have to go in through explorer/finder

[brevhead]

Originally Posted by DJY

I agree!
Only hiccup - and one I haven't solved yet - is it has duplicated my contacts!?!
Thought it might have something to do with the different file systems - but when I view it on PC only see one set...
haven't worked out how to look behind the scenes yet via my PB.

I would imagine that you pc can only see the contacts added in windows and your PB can only see the mac ones

Just plug in to your PC (if you want to use it mainly on you mac now) and delete all the contacts you see (remeber to back them up before) - this should just delete the windows ones leaving the mac ones there to view

[DJY]

Yeah Brevhead that is what I'm going to do.
Will test it first though...
aka change a number in a contact via my PC and then see which entry it is in the iPod (first or second listing).

then Voila.
Other option - as I dont know much about the different ways PCs and Mac store files differently - was forcing a reset / reformat in the iPod from my beautiful Powerbook.

[Cuckoo]

Since my ipod is being repared i can't check for myself... but i wander can i
partion my ipod, in 2 parts. 1 mac side (10gig) and 1 fat32 side (10 gig)

store my music on the mac side, and use the fat32 side for just file-exchange? That should cover about all of my storage needs

Anyone tried this?

Cuckoo

[wrldwzrd89]

Originally Posted by Cuckoo

Since my ipod is being repared i can't check for myself... but i wander can i
partion my ipod, in 2 parts. 1 mac side (10gig) and 1 fat32 side (10 gig)

store my music on the mac side, and use the fat32 side for just file-exchange? That should cover about all of my storage needs

Anyone tried this?

Cuckoo

You can't with ANY drive - the Mac OS won't let you, because the partition table scheme used by HFS and by FAT are not compatible.

[Cuckoo]

Originally Posted by wrldwzrd89

You can't with ANY drive - the Mac OS won't let you, because the partition table scheme used by HFS and by FAT are not compatible.

Bummer, that would have been nifty.... how about formatting it fat32 and then letting itunes om a mac use it? Or will itunes on a mac convert it to hfs?

Just spinning ideas here

[wrldwzrd89]

Originally Posted by Cuckoo

Bummer, that would have been nifty.... how about formatting it fat32 and then letting itunes om a mac use it? Or will itunes on a mac convert it to hfs?

Just spinning ideas here

That will work, since iTunes for Mac will use a Windows-formatted iPod just like it would a Mac-formatted one - it'll leave the disk format alone, since iTunes isn't responsible for disk formats.

[ehurdler]

I have never ever had a problem with my ipod. I got a G3 Ipod for xmas and i have both a powerbook G4 and Pc running windows xp. I always heard you couldnt use the ipod on both systems. Of course you can!!! I formatted the Ipod on my PC, then that was it. Didnt install any of the ipod software, past what the essentials were. My ipod shows up on my PC and my Mac. I can use everything on either computer now. Itunes, contacts, etc. I can also transfer files back and forth with the ipod as an external HD. I even after I got the ipod explained and debated with an employee at the apple store about this. She stated you can not use an ipod with both systems. A week later I was in the store again and she came up to me and told me I was correct.