iTunes from Mac to PC

I have iTunes set up on a desktop Mac. However, I have a laptop thats a pc and was considering moving my iTunes over to it (as my OH tends to use the Mac, I tend to use the laptop).

Can this be done without losing any of my music, podcasts etc? I know how it can be done from mac to mac or pc to pc, but not mac to pc.

Not sure about podcasts to be honest, but the method is similar to transferring your library to an external drive.

If you're not bothered about play counts and your podcasts, you can just follow this method:

http://www.askaboutmoney.com/showthread.php?t=113854&highlight=itunes

Then copy them to the pc itunes.

But good old Mac have a built in means in iTunes, here's a good run down of it:

http://www.ehow.com/how_4706951_export-itunes-mac-pc.html

I'm not sure which version(s) of iTunes you are running, but in iTunes 9.1.1 if you open Help and search for "Sharing your iTunes library across computers" you will get some useful info. Do this on the Mac and the PC, just in case you have different versions of iTunes - setting it up on each one is a doddle; syncing between them is also simple, once the initial set-up is done.

It is perfectly legal to register up to 5 computers with the iTunes store and if you tick “Automatically import new purchases from [Computer Name].” in your Preferences, new purchases / downloads will be automatically added to any registered computer accessing your iTunes store account.

Even on a Mickey Mouse low-speed, low-cost home network doing the equivalent of file exchange / file sharing via floppy disk should be unnecessary (in fairness it always was with Macs; that modus operandi was very much a PC thing )

Have a look and if you are still puzzled, post back here.

Thanks for the help guys, will have a look at it this weekend. Am not sure if Ill go ahead with it as I think the memory on the laptop is a lot lower than the Mac, a lot of applications already installed, so might make more sense just to stick with the Mac setup.

truthseeker said:

Thanks for the help guys, will have a look at it this weekend. Am not sure if Ill go ahead with it as I think the memory on the laptop is a lot lower than the Mac, a lot of applications already installed, so might make more sense just to stick with the Mac setup.

Click to expand...

One other solution may be one of the nice small external drives that are available, then you can set up on both to read the library from the drive and just plug it in on whatever machine you're using.

Not perfect if you're on the go with the laptop, but may get you best of both worlds. The only issue with that is to make sure the drive is connected before opening iTunes.

Thats a really good idea Latrade - Ill have a look at that as well.

I think the home sharing would be the easiest option as mathepac says, it's perfect when you have a mini mac. I'd have the external drive as the last resort, but if you do go for that don't forget to format it before hand to FAT32 and to make sure all the permissions are to read and write.