Syncing and itunes/apps complete confusion

[BookNerd]

Hi, I am in the UK and have a macbook pro since December 2010, and got my new iphone4 last week. I'm not used to Mac and don't know whether I'm just not understanding something in macspeak, but although the Macbook and iphone recognise eachother, and claim that they are synching, if I buy a song or game or app on one, the other doesn't seem to get it. Although, the laptop does acknowledge for example that the phone has ibooks or scrabble, but when I double click on them, nothing happens. I have tried downloading a song on the macbook to see if the phone would pick it up, but no. It says there is nothing downloaded.

I suspect there is something pretty obvious I am missing, but I'm baffled. Any online suggestions are to do with the two not connecting at all, or other pretty obvious problems. I deliberately chose to have an iphone and a mac thinking that it would be easy to connect the two, but am now wondering if I should have just stuck to PC because at least it would hint at what the problem was...

 

[JamesMB]

Connect your phone to iTunes, click on your device in the left pane and post a screenshot of your summary tab (specifically the Options at the bottom of the page), a screenshot of your apps tab, and music tab.

Although, the laptop does acknowledge for example that the phone has ibooks or scrabble, but when I double click on them, nothing happens.

If you are talking about double clicking on them, on the Mac in iTunes, nothing is supposed to happen. Those are "iPhone" apps not Mac apps. If you want to select the apps that sync with the iPhone, connect your device to iTunes, click on your device (in the left pane), select the apps tab at the top (not the one in the left pane), and place a check by the app that you want to sync.

I deliberately chose to have an iphone and a mac thinking that it would be easy to connect the two, but am now wondering if I should have just stuck to PC because at least it would hint at what the problem was...

If you have an incorrect setting in iTunes, it certainly wouldn't make any difference what OS your running.
iTunes is just gonna do what you tell it to do, unless of course it has become corrupted.