I own a PC laptop, but I just bought an iMac and will want to put all my music on there. I got a 250 GB hard drive on the Mac which dwarfs my 30 GB hard drive on my laptop, which simply can't hold all 20 GB of music on my iPod. So I'm wondering if I should back up all my music and then reformat the iPod for Mac instead of Windows to run primarily on my Mac. But will I be able to plug it in to my PC too and it recognize it? I know it works the other way around with Windows formatted working on Mac, but I don't know if it works the other way around. I would likely delete most, if not all, of my music from my laptop. So if I ever wanted to listen to music with my laptop, I'd connect my iPod to it. Is there a better way to go about this maybe?
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iPod quick ipod help.... windows or mac?
- Thread starter JonD25
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To the best of my knowledge, you cannot use it on both platforms at the same time. Personally, I would go with assigning it to your Mac, because if you were going to use it on your PC, you obviously wouldn't be able to back up all the music that you would keep on the iPod. And you never want to use your iPod as the backup - always have copies of your music on it's mother computer, because you never know what could happen!
One thing I don't know - is it possible to reformat a Windows iPod to work with a Mac?
Also, if you're that tied to listening to your music on your laptop, I kind of wonder why you have an iPod, lol.
I suppose if you are networked between the two computers (which I would hope you are), you could keep the iPod assigned to the windows machine and keep your music backed up on the Mac by transferring it there over the network. But that begs the question of whether music you bought would allow itself to be played on the machine you didn't buy it from (I know you can do this between macs, but I don't know about mac vs windows).
That was me brainstorming straight into a post, so I hope that made sense
One thing I don't know - is it possible to reformat a Windows iPod to work with a Mac?
Also, if you're that tied to listening to your music on your laptop, I kind of wonder why you have an iPod, lol.
I suppose if you are networked between the two computers (which I would hope you are), you could keep the iPod assigned to the windows machine and keep your music backed up on the Mac by transferring it there over the network. But that begs the question of whether music you bought would allow itself to be played on the machine you didn't buy it from (I know you can do this between macs, but I don't know about mac vs windows).
That was me brainstorming straight into a post, so I hope that made sense
Kuru Kuru said:To the best of my knowledge, you cannot use it on both platforms at the same time. Personally, I would go with assigning it to your Mac, because if you were going to use it on your PC, you obviously wouldn't be able to back up all the music that you would keep on the iPod. And you never want to use your iPod as the backup - always have copies of your music on it's mother computer, because you never know what could happen!
One thing I don't know - is it possible to reformat a Windows iPod to work with a Mac?
Also, if you're that tied to listening to your music on your laptop, I kind of wonder why you have an iPod, lol.
I suppose if you are networked between the two computers (which I would hope you are), you could keep the iPod assigned to the windows machine and keep your music backed up on the Mac by transferring it there over the network. But that begs the question of whether music you bought would allow itself to be played on the machine you didn't buy it from (I know you can do this between macs, but I don't know about mac vs windows).
That was me brainstorming straight into a post, so I hope that made sense
Well, I don't actually have the Mac yet. But it'll be here in the next couple of days.
I guess I'm just basically looking at being able to connect the ipod to my laptop if for some reason I ever wanted to like I do now with other Macs. Like, right now when I connect it to a Mac, I can't change certain things about it, but it still lets me listen to all my music. I'm just looking to be able to do the same if I make the iPod's default machine a Mac instead.
I don't know anything about networking a Mac with a PC. I'm on my school's campus using their wireless. So there might be a way. But I don't know how.
JonD25 said:
I could have sworn it wasn't possible the other way around, but things may have changed. The problem, like I said, is I don't know if you can change its, er, "allegiance" if you will, in that direction, or back and forth for that matter if it ends up not working. How were you planning on switching its format? If your iPod is still under any kind of warranty that lets you speak to someone at Apple (they are annoying about that), you should give them a call and find out about this, because it would suck to make a mistake in the process that you couldn't go back on.
Is it one of the new Intel macs?
Kuru Kuru said:I could have sworn it wasn't possible the other way around, but things may have changed. The problem, like I said, is I don't know if you can change its, er, "allegiance" if you will, in that direction, or back and forth for that matter if it ends up not working. How were you planning on switching its format? If your iPod is still under any kind of warranty that lets you speak to someone at Apple (they are annoying about that), you should give them a call and find out about this, because it would suck to make a mistake in the process that you couldn't go back on.
Is it one of the new Intel macs?
First off, yes, it's intel
Second, I suppose I'm not expert, but I figured I could just hook it up to the Mac and use the iPod updater to reformat it. If this is not possible, then I suppose that answers my question.
JonD25 said:First off, yes, it's intel
Second, I suppose I'm not expert, but I figured I could just hook it up to the Mac and use the iPod updater to reformat it. If this is not possible, then I suppose that answers my question.
Yeah, the first thing to do would be to look and see if that functionality exists, because I didn't think it did. You never really know until you get your paws on something!
Post back when you do.
Yeah, the iPod updater can reformat your iPod to Mac. Run the updater on OSX, it formats it for HFS (Mac), run it on PC, it formats it for FAT32 (Windows).
Now, a Mac (HFS) formatted iPod cannot be read by a Windows computer (without 3rd party software). However, I'm almost positive that a Windows formatted iPod can be used on a Mac. I know OSX can read and write to FAT32 filesystems, it's just a question of whether or not iTunes will be fine with a Windows iPod.
The only disadvantage to FAT32 is you can't have a single file over 4GB. Probably not a problem on your iPod
Now, a Mac (HFS) formatted iPod cannot be read by a Windows computer (without 3rd party software). However, I'm almost positive that a Windows formatted iPod can be used on a Mac. I know OSX can read and write to FAT32 filesystems, it's just a question of whether or not iTunes will be fine with a Windows iPod.
The only disadvantage to FAT32 is you can't have a single file over 4GB. Probably not a problem on your iPod
Thanks for clearing all that up! I was pretty sure Windows couldn't read the Mac version, but I didn't know the updater could do that. That's handy.
Do you know of any software that will allow you to put songs on your Windows-formatted iPod from your mac? If so, that sounds like it could be a good solution.
Do you know of any software that will allow you to put songs on your Windows-formatted iPod from your mac? If so, that sounds like it could be a good solution.
Found my answers.
http://playlistmag.com/features/2006/02/multiple/index.php
Although, this is talking about snycing. I just want to listen and maybe transfer a song or two. But either way, I suppose I'll just have to back it all up and try it out.
I guess there might be no reason I'd need to have my ipod to be read by my laptop once I have my Mac. If I want to listen to music, just plug headphones in to the ipod. But, I guess I was just wanting to know my possibilities.
http://playlistmag.com/features/2006/02/multiple/index.php
Although, this is talking about snycing. I just want to listen and maybe transfer a song or two. But either way, I suppose I'll just have to back it all up and try it out.
I guess there might be no reason I'd need to have my ipod to be read by my laptop once I have my Mac. If I want to listen to music, just plug headphones in to the ipod. But, I guess I was just wanting to know my possibilities.
OS X can read and write to Fat32 formatted hard drives no problem.
Until I lost my 3rd gen iPod (may it RiP), I used it connected to my mac mini, but kept it formatted as Fat32 so that I could plug it into my laptop and use it as a backup drive in case of emergency, and it always worked fine on OS X and XP.
Now I have a 1 gig nano, and it's just unreasonable to try to fit all my music, some photos, and use it as a backup drive, so I'll keep it formatted for my mac, but it really won't effect your listening pleasure which ever way you format it.
Until I lost my 3rd gen iPod (may it RiP), I used it connected to my mac mini, but kept it formatted as Fat32 so that I could plug it into my laptop and use it as a backup drive in case of emergency, and it always worked fine on OS X and XP.
Now I have a 1 gig nano, and it's just unreasonable to try to fit all my music, some photos, and use it as a backup drive, so I'll keep it formatted for my mac, but it really won't effect your listening pleasure which ever way you format it.