question about how switching to mac will affect other apple devices

[watchthesky]

i'm sorry if this has been asked before or if it's a silly question, but i will be switching from a windows 7 desktop to a macbook pro in the near future and i'm curious how this will affect syncing my iphone/ipod.

for my iphone, obviously it will want to replace my music files and photos and things, but what about my other information that it doesn't necessarily get from itunes? like my contacts, messages, settings, etc. will those be affected at all by switching computers/OS? if so, how?

and then my ipod. i have a classic that i bought when they were first released yeaaars ago, so i may be a bit confused on this, but i remember it asking about operating system or being formatted to specifically work with windows. what does this mean? is it a permanent thing, meaning i can now only sync it with itunes running on windows, or can it 'reformat' itself to work with my macbook? or option three, i'm completely crazy and this didn't actually happen.

any help/tips/info about using these with a new mac would be great. thanks.

 

[awhitmer83]

I switched to Mac last summer. I had to authorize iTunes on the Mac for my iPhone, but other than that I had no problems getting it to sync and didn't lose any of my info.

I don't know for sure about the iPod, but I'm thinking it shouldn't have any trouble either. I'm wondering if maybe iTunes is where you saw the "formatted for Windows" thing - can't think of any reason why it wouldn't work on either platform.

 

[watchthesky]

I switched to Mac last summer. I had to authorize iTunes on the Mac for my iPhone, but other than that I had no problems getting it to sync and didn't lose any of my info.

I don't know for sure about the iPod, but I'm thinking it shouldn't have any trouble either. I'm wondering if maybe iTunes is where you saw the "formatted for Windows" thing - can't think of any reason why it wouldn't work on either platform.

good to know about the iphone. really don't want to lose everything but i don't have it backed up to icloud and obviously switching over i wouldn't have it backed up on my mac yet either.

i believe itunes is where i saw that, which is why i'm a bit confused about how far that actually goes. typically with itunes you just need to authorise a new library to be synced. i've used it with new PC's but never cross-platform.

 

[awhitmer83]

Do you still have access to the iTunes library containing all the music on your Classic? When I bought my Mac, I used Home Sharing to move that library from my PC, so that way I didn't lose anything. Only took about an hour over wifi for around 1200 songs.

 

[watchthesky]

Do you still have access to the iTunes library containing all the music on your Classic? When I bought my Mac, I used Home Sharing to move that library from my PC, so that way I didn't lose anything. Only took about an hour over wifi for around 1200 songs.

yes, i do still have access to the library and all the music files. i'm just kind of wondering if my ipod will still sync to it even if it's been moved to a mac when it's 'formatted for windows'.

 

[awhitmer83]

yes, i do still have access to the library and all the music files. i'm just kind of wondering if my ipod will still sync to it even if it's been moved to a mac when it's 'formatted for windows'.

I truly believe it will. I have an old Shuffle that I never use - just hooked it up to the Mac to test it out and it worked fine (other than freaking out because it can't hold all the music in my library).

 

[watchthesky]

I truly believe it will. I have an old Shuffle that I never use - just hooked it up to the Mac to test it out and it worked fine (other than freaking out because it can't hold all the music in my library).

i imagine mine would probably work fine too. i assumed it likely would since it's an apple product and all, i just wanted to be sure since i've been using it with windows for so long and it specially mentioned being used with windows.

thanks for the help guys.

 

[Caliber26]

I definitely recommend backing up your iPhone to iCloud. All your settings, contacts, camera roll pictures, etc, will be there even after you sync with a new computer. Those iCloud backups can be a real lifesaver.

 

[Alameda]

Yes, I have an iTunes library that's 90 GB, and I moved it from iTunes for Windows to my Mac this weekend. There are a few steps you need to follow, but it's basically a giant folder copy. Once you move the folder, you launch iTunes for Mac and everything is ready just as it was in Windows. The detailed directions:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4527