Getting my PC iTunes Library onto a Mac

[Antimatter]

Alright, so I'm going to be purchasing a BlackBook shortly after Macworld and I want to know how easily it will be to transfer my music.

I just copied all of my songs and videos onto a portable hard drive. When I get my Mac, will I be able to just plug in the hard drive and import the songs to iTunes?

Another question on a completely different subject, do all Macs come with GarageBand preinstalled? All of the MacBooks at my school have them, but I don't see anything about it on Apple's website.

Thanks

 

[richard.mac]

to move all your music and all your playlists, ratings, song counts etc just copy over the iTunes music folder from your "my music" folder on your PC to your music folder in your home directory on your mac. then open iTunes holding "option" and then select the library.

this is assuming that "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" is checked in your iTunes preferences and consequently all your music is in the iTunes music folder.

yep all macs come with iLife '08 pre-installed which includes GarageBand, but iLife does not come with the retail version of Mac OS X i.e. if you install Leopard over Tiger using an erase and install there will be no iLife on the system.

 

[Antimatter]

Alright, but I don't quite get what you mean by copying the music folder. Do I copy the music folder to my hard drive then to the Mac? Thanks.

 

[Antimatter]

Sorry for the double post, but would it be necessary to upgrade the 1 gig of RAM to 2 gigs right away? I read on here that the MacBooks get really slow when using iMovie, and I will be using that.

 

[GregE]

Here is what I did when I moved my songs to my iMac recently.

On my PC I had my songs on an EHD. I went into iTunes and changed the settings so my songs were in the default iTunes folder and told it to consolidate them. Then I saved the iTunes folder onto an EHD. I then went on my iMac and deleted the iTunes folder. Next I connected the EHD to my iMac and moved the folder from my PC to where it was on the iMac. I then started up iTunes and voila, there was all my music and playlists. I then decided to reformat my iPod so it was in the Mac format. After that, I sync'd it with my iMac iTunes.

If you do a search you shuld be able to find a guide that tells you everything you need to do. I know I left out some steps and I tried to find the thread I found out how to do this but couldn't find it.

Hope that helps

 

[GregE]

Sorry for the double post, but would it be necessary to upgrade the 1 gig of RAM to 2 gigs right away? I read on here that the MacBooks get really slow when using iMovie, and I will be using that.

Try it with 1GB and see how it works for you and then decide.

 

[Antimatter]

Hey man thanks for the help. I read a guide somewhere but it seemed way too complicated because it said I had to edit some files, but that was to get the playlists and play count and everything like that. All I want is my songs and videos.

 

[killmoms]

Hey man thanks for the help. I read a guide somewhere but it seemed way too complicated because it said I had to edit some files, but that was to get the playlists and play count and everything like that. All I want is my songs and videos.

You can keep your playcounts and ratings and whatnot though, just do what GregE said. Consolidate your PC's music to the default folder, copy that whole folder (with the library file) to a hard drive, then copy that folder in place of the Mac's default iTunes folder in ~/Music. When you open up iTunes, there will be all your music, with all metadata preserved.

 

[Antimatter]

So I've decided to buy 4 gigs of RAM from Newegg and install it myself for $80 instead of paying $170 for Apple's 2 gigs of RAM.

I'm going to try to do the PC part with iTunes right now, hopefully I can get everything thing running properly. I'm in desperate need of a new computer, mine is so slow.