new mba--old mom...

1. Using gmail should really have no effect on your impotrted contacts. Unless you have used the gmail to sync your contacts. Then that may be the problem. You could try unsyncing your gmail and see what happens.
2. Music that was imported from a cd to your ipod will not be synced through icloud. Only the music that was purchased through the iTunes Store will sync through the icloud. If you have all of the music on a USB then just import it to your library that way.
3. I am not too sure about the photos. However from the ssounds of it, it looks likeyou are going to have to reorganize them all.
4. The MBA will not show up on itunes because its a computer and not a portable device such as the iphone, ipad, or ipod.

Good luck with everything, hope this helps!

 

I suspect you have already started to move data, so this advice may be too late, but Apple provides a tool called migration assistant to transfer all your files, music,data apps and settings from one mac to another.

Link to apple's migration assistant article

 

Your Macs have Migration Assistant in the Apps/Utility folder which helps transfer files and apps to new Macs. It will also transfer your program registrations (those that have that) and preference files. You either have to connect the 2 Macs by a cable (and use MA on the new one) or you can run Migration Assistant from your new Mac connected to an external hard drive with Time Machine from your older Mac or a bootable clone of your older iMac.

Before I retired an older iMac I made certain I had an updated bootable clone of the hard drive on an external drive --just in case. (And it recently came in very handy for a deprecated font I desperately needed for a project.) You can make clones easily using SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner.

Once you get your new Macbook set up as you wish, it's advisable to make a bootable clone of it too, & also run Time Machine.

 

Theses days you can also use migration assistant via WiFi or just connect via Ethernet to the source Mac. However apple do recommend a direct connection to enable a quicker transfer i.e. Directly connect Ethernet cable to each mac.

FireWire or thunderbolt would be quicker if both macs support those connections.

 

Ha! Yes, you are right, wifi is to be avoided for large transfers, I helped my brother set up his Mini a few years ago and we were only able to use wifi, --it took absolutely forever! He didn't have any extra cables and I didn't think to bring any since he's an engineer...

 

I'm not familiar with the issues you mentioned in the first and fourth questions, but I'm happy to help with number 2 and 3!

iCloud only backs up music purchased from iTunes. However, Apple offers the iTunes Match service which will upload all of the songs you have ripped from your CDs and put them in your iCloud account alongside all of your online purchased music. Once they've uploaded from the old iMac, they'll be available for download on the Air.

http://www.apple.com/itunes/itunes-match/

If you're not interested in paying for iTunes Match, it gets a little trickier since some of the songs are there and some aren't. If you have the time and not too big of a collection, you can open the iTunes window on your iMac and open another window with your flash drive plugged into the iMac, and drag the missing songs over. When you're done, you can plug the flash drive into the Air, and drag the songs right back into iTunes.

Regarding your photos no longer being sorted, dragging the photos over to a flash drive will only copy the photos and not any of the organizational information. The good news is that iPhoto has a single file on your iMac that you can drag over to your flash drive (given it has enough space) and open right up on your MacBook Air.

In most cases, you can find the iPhoto Library file by opening your Finder, then clicking "Pictures" from the left menu. You should see a file named "iPhoto Library" and it'll likely be quite large. If your flash drive is big enough, drag it over to your flash drive window to let it copy. When you're done, plug the drive into your Air and drag it to the "Pictures" folder. If you haven't taken any new pictures since you've setup your Air, it'll be safe to overwrite the previous file. The next time you open iPhoto, it may take a while to load all the photos for the first time, but they will all be there, sorted just as they were on your iMac.

Let me know if you have any questions!

 

Ok step 1 is your iphoto library still in your Pictures folder? The Library is called iPhoto Library.

If it is then iPhoto may just need to be reconnected to the library file. To do this press the Option ⌥ key while starting iPhoto and it will ask were your iPhoto Library is - just point to the Library in your Pictures folder. If the Library is not in your Pictures folder, then it looks like you did not copy the Library to the Flash drive, but you attempted to move it instead. It is possible that the Library is stored somewhere else on the hard disk, so I would do a spotlight search for the file.

 

Like everyone said you can utilize migration assistant. However, it may be slow but it works.

1. It is slow. I did migration assistant from my '06 Toshiba Satellite to the MBA via wifi and it took about 6 hours total. With that being said, I set it up before I went to work and when I cam back it was done.

2. Be careful if you have a lot going on with the original user account, don't get attached to it if you want to do the migration assistant. What the migration assistant does is creates an account from your old laptop to your MBA. I wish someone would have told me that beforehand because then I had to delete my other user account that I had already personalized.

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Also, does anyone know if migration assistant will replace the files on the MBA or create copies?

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It maybe best if you call apple. They can talk you through the steps of completing file transfers, that way you make sure you have all of your files without accidentally deleting any of them.

 

Hopefully you have just restored your iPhoto Library. Do you have a backup of your iMac's hard disk, Apple Time Machine (Time Capsule) or something else like one of the cloud backup solutions like Crashplan?

 

Take a break from this and don't be hard on yourself. Your Genius appointment is terrific and you'll get everything sorted.

It sounds though, like you're moving from a machine with a larger hard drive to a new machine with a smaller hard drive, so yes, shoehorning the older data isn't going to work. Weaselboy's suggestion to get an external hard drive for your new MB Air is excellent.

Something encouraging to note is that when the Apple genius gets everything in order, he/she will probably move all your older pref lists too, including iPhoto's. This means your albums, keywords, etc., will still be accessible on your Air and you won't have to re-sort thousands of photos into albums & events, etc.

Best wishes to you for tomorrow!

 

If you paid for iTunes Match, then all your music will be in the cloud, and you have the additional advantage that anything ripped at less than 256 Kbit will be upgraded to 256 Kbit.

But something completely different: You should have a Time Machine backup for your computers. If you don't, _run_ to the nearest shop and buy a cheap hard drive to backup your first computer. Once that is done, you can move _everything_ from the Time Machine backup to your second computer. And of course, when the drives on your computers go wrong (which they will, eventually) you have a backup.

 

Can I also suggest that you make at least one backup of your "irreplaceable" stuff. One on-site and one in a secure location (bank). Plus initiate a regular backup routine to the on-site version. That way any tests/transfers you make with your data can be reversed/recovered without adding 10 years to your age !

 

If you use CCC, it will do it every day for you (assuming the drive is connected). That's what I do - to a NAS share. OR use Time Machine.

 

Sorry, it's this : http://www.bombich.com.
Carbon Copy Cloner is the name of the S/W.