iPod touch New iPod Touch, sync to PC give as gift

[tthkbw]

I have an iPod touch which I sync to a PC.

I just purchased a second iPod Touch for my daughter. I want to put some photos, videos and contacts on my daughter's Touch as part of the gift, then give it to her. She has a MacBook and an iPod Classic currently. So when she receives the Touch she will connect to her MacBook and use her iTunes account.

Something tells me this is probably way to complicated and I should just give her the Touch and be done with it.

Is there a simple way to do this kind of thing?

Thanks for any help. I am pretty technical, but only with PC's--the Mac world is pretty unknown to me.

 

[big-blue-wolf]

If I received a touch as a gift I would rather have it completely 'virgin'. I think opening it and doing the first sync is part of the pleasure of receiving a gift like a touch.

If you want to give videos, photos etc, why not burn them to a CD/DVD and give them with the touch so your daughter can choose to put them on the iPod at her leisure.

 

[mkrishnan]

I'd agree, just worry about that part after she opens it and starts playing with it.

 

[tthkbw]

Yeah, but can I do it anyway?

If I received a touch as a gift I would rather have it completely 'virgin'. I think opening it and doing the first sync is part of the pleasure of receiving a gift like a touch.

If you want to give videos, photos etc, why not burn them to a CD/DVD and give them with the touch so your daughter can choose to put them on the iPod at her leisure.

Well, I sort of agree, but you still get the pleasure of doing it yourself for the first time. And she will get to unwrap it since we will repackage in the original packaging.

My problem is that, based on what I've been able to find out so far, I may confuse things a lot (and maybe make it not work) by first syncing with a PC and then with a Mac, and with different iTunes accounts.

So, while I care about the philosophical question you pose, I really still want an answer to the technical question.

 

[mkrishnan]

The real answer is then basically that it will be a huge pain in the butt. As I understand it, you can do it if you "manually manage" the music and videos on the iPhone, but the iPhone won't copy the contacts and other things back off into her iTunes, and it won't allow her to put any photos or contacts from her own iTunes on it without deleting all the ones you put on it. She'll be able to put her songs and videos on it, but that's it. If she wants to do the other things, I'm pretty sure it'll delete everything outside of the music/videos you put on it in the process.

 

[tthkbw]

Oh, well

The real answer is then basically that it will be a huge pain in the butt. As I understand it, you can do it if you "manually manage" the music and videos on the iPhone, but the iPhone won't copy the contacts and other things back off into her iTunes, and it won't allow her to put any photos or contacts from her own iTunes on it without deleting all the ones you put on it. She'll be able to put her songs and videos on it, but that's it. If she wants to do the other things, I'm pretty sure it'll delete everything outside of the music/videos you put on it in the process.

Well, that's kind of what I had figured, things just aren't set up to do this sort of thing.

I appreciate the help!

 

[Night Spring]

And she will get to unwrap it since we will repackage in the original packaging.

From what I've heard/read about the way the latestTouch is packaged, I kind of doubt you can put back the package into a state like it was before you opened it.

The real answer is then basically that it will be a huge pain in the butt. As I understand it, you can do it if you "manually manage" the music and videos on the iPhone, but the iPhone won't copy the contacts and other things back off into her iTunes, and it won't allow her to put any photos or contacts from her own iTunes on it without deleting all the ones you put on it. She'll be able to put her songs and videos on it, but that's it. If she wants to do the other things, I'm pretty sure it'll delete everything outside of the music/videos you put on it in the process.

Actually, a friend of mine had his iphone set to manually manage music, but when I tried to add more music to his iphone on my computer, it deleted all the music he had on it, and replaced them with the ones I put in. Now, contacts, otoh, it asked me if I wanted to merge his contacts with mine, and I said yes, and presto, I had all his contacts plus my contacts on my computer.

 

[mkrishnan]

Actually, a friend of mine had his iphone set to manually manage music, but when I tried to add more music to his iphone on my computer, it deleted all the music he had on it, and replaced them with the ones I put in. Now, contacts, otoh, it asked me if I wanted to merge his contacts with mine, and I said yes, and presto, I had all his contacts plus my contacts on my computer.

That's interesting... for the music part, are you sure music was set to be managed manually on both computers? The way you describe it completely defeats the benefit of manual management.

For the contacts, I had no idea it could merge! That's pretty cool!

I still think the whole endeavor would be a pain in the butt, though.

 

[Night Spring]

That's interesting... for the music part, are you sure music was set to be managed manually on both computers? The way you describe it completely defeats the benefit of manual management.

For the contacts, I had no idea it could merge! That's pretty cool!

I still think the whole endeavor would be a pain in the butt, though.

The manually manage music setting is set on each ipod/iphone, not the computer. And I did confirm that my friend's iphone was set to manually manage music before trying to drag more music into it.

I do agree that trying to pre-install stuff on an iPod you are gifting doesn't really work. You need to jailbreak and/or use third-party software in order to get any music or videos off the iPod into another computer, and iPods weren't made to be permanent media storage solutions, so the person you give the iPod to is always one wrong step away from losing all the music/videos/photos you gave them.

 

[Ivan P]

The manually manage music setting is set on each ipod/iphone, not the computer. And I did confirm that my friend's iphone was set to manually manage music before trying to drag more music into it.

mkrishnan is right. I think something must have been wrong with your friend's iPhone then, because I've synced manually with many different computers and have had no songs, content or videos ever disappear.

 

[Night Spring]

mkrishnan is right. I think something must have been wrong with your friend's iPhone then, because I've synced manually with many different computers and have had no songs, content or videos ever disappear.

Okay, after reading your post, I just tried with my friend's iPhone again, and it turns out I was misrembering a few details, but the end result is the same: I can't drag music from two different computers into his iPhone.

Here's what happens.
1. I connect the iPhone to the computer it regularly syncs with, "manually manage music" is checked.
2. I connect it to a different computer -- "manually manage music" is now unchecked.
3. I check "manually manage music," and I get a message saying all music and videos on the iPhone will be deleted.

With the iPod classic, the "manually manage music" does stay checked across different computers, and I'm able to drag music onto it from all of them.

 

[mkrishnan]

Huh... that's the first time I've heard that. I can't easily check with mine because it's automatically managed....

 

[Night Spring]

Huh... that's the first time I've heard that. I can't easily check with mine because it's automatically managed....

Actually, now that I think of it, it's possible that the Touch could behave differently than the iPhone in this regard, because I've read people saying that they can sync different categories of info on a Touch to different computers (ie, sync contacts with a work computer, music and videos with home computer) but iPhone owners say this doesn't work on the iPhone. But my Touch is also set to sync music automatically, so I don't want to play around with it, either.

 

[alchemistmuffin]

You should give her the new iPod touch completely unopened!

Have her "experience" the joy of having the Apple product, take picture of her opening the iPod touch as an unboxing pic, then film the process of her syncing the iPod touch for the first time....

the joy of owning an Apple product!

 

[sandman42]

As far as I know, any iPod, including the iPhone and the Touch, can only sync with one computer at a time. When you connect it to a different computer, regardless of whether you have 'manually managed' selected, the new computer will overwrite anything that was synced to the iPod from the first computer. This is what I've experienced using my various iPods and computers, though I've never tried setting to 'manually manage' to see if it behaves differently, but I wouldn't expect it to.

This is all part of how Apple tried to play nice with the RIAA, so that you couldn't take your iPod (of any kind) to your friends house and 'pick up' some of his music with your iPod that's otherwise synced to your own computer. By making it an 'all or nothing' arrangement with the computer they try to discourage using iPods to 'share' music.

 

[Night Spring]

As far as I know, any iPod, including the iPhone and the Touch, can only sync with one computer at a time. When you connect it to a different computer, regardless of whether you have 'manually managed' selected, the new computer will overwrite anything that was synced to the iPod from the first computer. This is what I've experienced using my various iPods and computers, though I've never tried setting to 'manually manage' to see if it behaves differently, but I wouldn't expect it to.

Well, as I said, I do have an iPod classic set to manually manage music sitting in front of me, and it currently has music I dragged to it from two different computers. So while it's true that iPods can only *sync* to one computer at a time, when set to manually manage music, some models do accept music from different computers.