using ipod on mac

bigstar

ok second question of the day, ill probably be askin a lot of them. im completely new to macs os. i have an ipod 80gb, i first used it with windows xp, is there any way i can set it up on the mac without erasing all my songs. also it is formatted to windows how do i format it to mac. thanks in advance and sorry if its a stupid question

J-blk

iTunes can format it for Mac OS. Unfortunately, it's not that easy to setup without erasing the music (and obviously you can't reformat it either) and iTunes does not give you the option to transfer your music from the iPod to the Mac first. You can use a tool like Senuti to get all the music off it - it shouldn't matter that it is Windows-formatted right now:

http://fadingred.org/senuti/

So grab all the music first and get it on your Mac and afterwards, you can use iTunes to format it and re-sync everything back.

bigstar

this senuti doesnt do any damage to the ipods softwre

faceman

I dont think you need to change your windows formatted ipod to the mac version and if you do the mac version wont work on windows.

It should work ok.

J-blk

Senuti doesn't do anything to the iPod itself - it just allows you to browse and copy the files from it, not much else. You could even copy the songs yourself manually using the Mac OS X Finder and nothing else, though it would take a bit of work fixing/organizing the files afterwards because of the oddball file structure the iPod uses. In general though, not having a backup of your music is not a good idea and if you get it onto the Mac, you might just want to leave a copy on there anyway.

Breezer

A Windows-formatted iPod will work fine on a Mac, but you won't be able to update the iPod's software. Senuti is your best bet, or transfer the files from your PC to your Mac, reformat, and resync.

bigstar

i want to reformat the ipod though, cause the mac is my own, whereas the pc is the familys

Kid Nothing

Transfer your music to your Mac and then reformat your iPod to Mac format. It seems like hard work but it's not that hard if you've a wireless network or even an ethernet cable!

P.S. I may be drunk but I think I make sense!

J-blk

Either just use Senuti as I suggested to get the music from the iPod to the Mac or as Amull87 mentioned, just get all the music from the PC to the Mac directly and you can then re-format the iPod and sync all your music back to it.