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Making the move, couple of questions

I

iPhazer

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 24, 2008
28
0
Hi guys!

I've finally made the decision to move over to the :apple: world, a brand new iMac 24" will be arriving next week. Can't wait!

So, will moving my whole iTunes folder from my pc to the iMac copy all of my playlists, podcasts, playcounts and everything? Or is there something else I will have to do?

Also, I am using an iPhone 3G currently syncing with the PC. Anything to consider when syncing it up with the new Mac? I would like to keep all calendar appointments and so on.

Finally, I'm going to buy either Parallels or VMWare Fusion, which would be better for simple games? I'm talking DirectX 7 and 8 here, nothing spectacular.


Been reading these forums for a while now, and it seems like a great community! :) Thanks in advance guys.
 
Welcome!

There's a nifty little knowledgebase article on apple's site on moving iTunes from PC to Mac.

iPhone sync on a Mac occurs in iTunes. I'm not sure what calendar program you were syncing with on your PC so I'm not sure it they will transfer.

VMWare gets higher ratings all around (Macworld did a review a couple of months back). There are some rebates floating around - check amazon for pricing.
 
I'm also fairly new with my MacBook Pro, but I simply saved my iTunes from my PC onto blank DVDs and then just loaded the DVDs onto my new MAC. I'm not sure if this was the fastest or best way of doing it, but it was extremely simple and it worked.
 
Thanks for the advice so far!

I do not live near an apple store, so it would be best if I could transfer my music myself. Couldn't find anything on apple.com on moving the iTunes library from pc to mac, but a google search gave me this: http://lifehacker.com/software/itun...-library-from-a-pc-to-mac-and-back-242468.php

seems like a rather lengthy process tho, but I guess I rather do that than moving 40 gigs on DVD's.

My iPhone is not synced to any calendar on my PC, so when I set it up to sync with iCal will all entries from the iPhone copy over?


Cheers!
 
I recently copied an iTunes library folder via network to another drive with a virgin install of iTunes 7.7.1. The tunes didn't show up until choosing Add To Library under the iTunes file menu and highlighting the songs.
 
jodelli said:
I recently copied an iTunes library folder via network to another drive with a virgin install of iTunes 7.7.1. The tunes didn't show up until choosing Add To Library under the iTunes file menu and highlighting the songs.
Click to expand...

Did that keep all playlists, and metadata such as ratings and play counts?
 
As long as you save your library you should be good.

Best way is an external HDD. They're real cheap so I suggest you get a 500gb one for under 100 bucks copy all your music over to it and then back to your mac from it and be done with it. It's really not complex.

That way you can also use the drive for your awesome automated TimeMachine backups once you're done using it for transferring your music. :)

Enjoy your Mac. Welcome to the community.
 
iPhazer said:
Did that keep all playlists, and metadata such as ratings and play counts?
Click to expand...

Welcome to the forum and to the world of Mac, and congrats on your purchase. You'll enjoy it hugely, I expect.

Re your query on iTunes and playlists, I have to say that, in my case, actually, it didn't; the full iTunes library transferred easily enough (I got the chap in the Apple shop I purchased my MBP from to install everything I needed, including Office for Mac, transfer and set up everything I had on my old Toshiba, and he did so over a few hours using the memory of a 160 HDD iPod). However, while the iTunes library transferred, my old playlists didn't. In truth, that didn't really bother me, I made some from memory, some from the iPod, and some fresh ones. One thing to note is that you will then have to format your iPod to Mac, rather than Windows once you have transferred the iTunes library. Cheers and good luck.
 
Congrats on making the switch and welcome to the Mac user base!

I prefer Fusion over Parallels.
 
Thank you all for the kind words :)

The playlists I can live without, but I have spent a lot of time setting up ratings and would really like to keep them. Is there no easy way to do this?

I'm sure I'll love my new mac, it looks awesome!
 
"One thing to note is that you will then have to format your iPod to Mac, rather than Windows once you have transferred the iTunes library."

This is not completely incorrect, but incorrect enough.

In order to perform any updates on your ipod you would need to, however, the ipod itself would function perfectly fine on a Mac if it's PC formatted.

In my case w/ my 5G I haven't had any issues with updates because Apple hasn't updated it in years, so It's not worth it for me to reformat and lose the ability to use as disk space on a PC or Mac.
 
agentphish said:
"One thing to note is that you will then have to format your iPod to Mac, rather than Windows once you have transferred the iTunes library."

This is not completely incorrect, but incorrect enough.

In order to perform any updates on your ipod you would need to, however, the ipod itself would function perfectly fine on a Mac if it's PC formatted.

In my case w/ my 5G I haven't had any issues with updates because Apple hasn't updated it in years, so It's not worth it for me to reformat and lose the ability to use as disk space on a PC or Mac.
Click to expand...

A PC formatted iPod did work on a Mac in my experience too. However after a few months the iPod 2G Nano appeared to get 'confused' and had to be reformatted or reset, or whatever that's called.
It might have been external causes but the only way to get it to work again was to plug it back into a nearby PC.
YMMV.
 
I don't have an iPod so I'm gonna go for a 500gb external My Book drive, and use it for TimeMachine as agentphish suggested :)

Appreciate the help guys, now I'm just waiting.. expected delivery is one week from today, the wait is really hard once the order has been made! :D
 
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