iPod PC Formatted iPod to Mac

[applekid]

So, my friend switched to a Mac. He had a Dell PC with an iPod 4G. The iPod is formatted for the PC, obviously. I told him to just transfer all of his songs to his iPod, deauthorize the PC, and we'll transfer the songs straight from the PC to the Mac since it appeared to be the easiest way. I've done that with my Mac-formatted iPod to my Macs, so I figured no problem.

Well, we connected to his iMac without a problem. iTunes loads up. iPod is recognized. It says the iPod should be updated, but we can't since we're on a Mac. No biggy. I download iPodRip, tried to rip the music off his iPod to no avail. The status bar says the first song is being ripped, and stays stuck for a while. A long while. I tried iLinkPod to do a manual file transfer. No such luck. The transfer window says zero kilobytes transferred for a long while.

Obviously ripping music off a PC formatted iPod to a Mac is not going well. What software can I use to do this direct transfer? I'd prefer that instead of me lugging my hard drive to his house to transfer from PC to HD to Mac.

 

[mad jew]

Maybe try Senuti a go. It's worked for me with PC-formatted iPods on Macs. Otherwise maybe try iPod -> Folder.

 

[dornoforpyros]

Transfer songs to Mac.

Plug in iPod....do a full restore.

Transfer songs to iPod.

Easy enough

 

[combatcolin]

If you have the HD space just copy from the iPod to a new folder on your Mac.

Then just copy to the iTunes music folder.

Done i on my PC and my sisters eMac without any hassle.

Actually the eMac was 4X quicker on FW than my PC FW is.

 

[gauchogolfer]

I also used Senuti (link in post 2) to facilitate my switch from PC to Mac last year. No problems at all with copying to my iTunes library. One question for others here: if you have 'copy to iTunes library on import' enabled, can you just use that, navigate to the connected iPod's library, then import? I'd think that would copy over to the Mac just fine.

Cheers

 

[jordanste]

Transfer the songs before you update your ipod software.

 

[rebhaf]

This is nuts

Aside from the third-party software (which I haven't tried yet), I've never seen such diverse suggestions that simply do NOT work (for me, anyway). I'm constantly reading things that I've tried many times (I was just posting on similar threads and other forums, and it's the same thing). Could it be that all these compatability issues vary from week to week, product to product, country to country, update to update?

I have a PC-formatted iPod shuffle that I cannot link up to my iBook (which runs the latest Tiger) without erasing everything on the iPod shuffle. So I read on other threads that all I have to do is set it for "manual transfer" and it will work. Nope. Not true.

Now one of you is saying (if I understand correctly) to just plug in a PC-formatted iPod to the Mac, put the songs on the Mac's hard drive and then bring them into iTunes. Well, how the heck do you do that? When I plug in my iPod shuffle (which, in essence, is pretty much a USB key), there's no flash-memory icon popping up like with a real USB key. How can you transfer files then?

All I know is that I've tried everything on these forums (except the hack-ware, which I will), and nothing works. I can't even get a straight answer from the online Apple Store people. They seem confused too. What works for someone won't work for someone else.

 

[Chundles]

Aside from the third-party software (which I haven't tried yet), I've never seen such diverse suggestions that simply do NOT work (for me, anyway). I'm constantly reading things that I've tried many times (I was just posting on similar threads and other forums, and it's the same thing). Could it be that all these compatability issues vary from week to week, product to product, country to country, update to update?

I have a PC-formatted iPod shuffle that I cannot link up to my iBook (which runs the latest Tiger) without erasing everything on the iPod shuffle. So I read on other threads that all I have to do is set it for "manual transfer" and it will work. Nope. Not true.

Now one of you is saying (if I understand correctly) to just plug in a PC-formatted iPod to the Mac, put the songs on the Mac's hard drive and then bring them into iTunes. Well, how the heck do you do that? When I plug in my iPod shuffle (which, in essence, is pretty much a USB key), there's no flash-memory icon popping up like with a real USB key. How can you transfer files then?

All I know is that I've tried everything on these forums (except the hack-ware, which I will), and nothing works. I can't even get a straight answer from the online Apple Store people. They seem confused too. What works for someone won't work for someone else.

OK, calm down.

The shuffle is a totally different beast. It NEEDS to be associated with a library. You can't simply go from computer to computer with a shuffle. All other iPods have this ability but the shuffle does not.

A shuffle doesn't have specific Mac/PC formats, it comes pre-formatted as MS-DOS or FAT32 or whatever it is and that does not change. It is designed this way so that whilst you can't use it to transfer music via iTunes etc, it allows you to use it as a USB drive on PCs and Macs.

The information given is correct for iPods, just not the shuffle. If you want to transfer music from a PC to a Mac with a shuffle, open the preferences and set the music/data ratio all the way to 512MB or 1GB data and drag your music files onto the drive via Windows Explorer. This is when the shuffle becomes "pretty much a USB drive," when you've got it set for all music, it's not a USB drive, it's purely an mp3 player. When you plug it into your Mac now, it will mount on the desktop as a drive and you can copy the data out of it into iTunes via the Finder.

 

[combatcolin]

Now if everything was easy life would be no fun and the satisfaction of compleating a stupid-annoying-should-be-straightforward- task wouldn't be there.

 

[rebhaf]

OK, calm down.

The shuffle is a totally different beast. It NEEDS to be associated with a library. You can't simply go from computer to computer with a shuffle. All other iPods have this ability but the shuffle does not.

Great, thanks. Now I wonder why Apple Store's "experts" couldn't explain this?

 

[Chundles]

Great, thanks. Now I wonder why Apple Store's "experts" couldn't explain this?

Pfft. If I've learnt anything in this life it's to never, ever trust the people who call themselves "experts."

 

[mad jew]

To be fair, the Apple experts are between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, they have the customers asking for easier access to their music from all machines but on the other hand they have the record companies demanding more stringent limitations to limit "sharing" or pirating music (even if that's not the intent of the customer).