Future MBA Owners: Sync iTunes?

[Particular]

To the folks purchasing the MBA how do you plan to manage your iTunes library? Most are 100GB+... so is their a way to selectively keep your iTunes library in sync - but only the files you want/need so it can fit on the little itty bitty hdds?

Thanks.

 

[taylorwilsdon]

To the folks purchasing the MBA how do you plan to manage your iTunes library? Most are 100GB+... so is their a way to selectively keep your iTunes library in sync - but only the files you want/need so it can fit on the little itty bitty hdds?

Thanks.

Most are 100gb+? What planet are you from... I'd wager that less then 1/100th of iTunes users have more then 20gb, let alone 100gb on their hard drive. Not everyone pirates music or has immense owned collections. That would be literally tens of thousands of dollars in (legally) owned music.

 

[Particular]

thank you for your comments they where of immense value to me

 

[SoLibertyDies]

*hides his 120G iTunes library*

I would assume you'd just send over playlists, which is what I have to do on my iPod Touch and Shuffle, I always miss the songs I don't send over though. sad days.

there's always externals.

 

[richard.mac]

well... we have to assume that the OPs music is legally purchased as there is no indication that it is not. but we can think otherwise.

how about an external disk? or only transferring your most played or recently added playlists? i dont think anyone would listen to every song in a 100GB library in the lifetime of a MBA. unless of course most of the library is videos.

maybe the lovely new time capsule device that apple just introduced if it can be used for storage as well as backup?

personally my library is 12 GB with a few videos.

 

[richard.mac]

thank you for your comments they where of immense value to me

WOW... that was pretty ignorant! youd only had one reply when you posted this

 

[teleromeo]

My iTunes folder is 40,67 GB large and I think of myself I have a quite lot of music. an MacBook Air would be large enough for me. Most of Macbook Air buyers that have a large music library will store their songs on an other device : a second computer or an external HD.

 

[TheStu]

Or anyone that buys a MacBook Air can just do like I do on my MacBook, I keep my music library on my desktop since that has much more space, and I can't think of anyone that is going to buy the MBA that doesn't already have another computer.

I use SimplifyMedia to stream my music library over the internet to my laptop, so I can access it anywhere on the planet, without using up hard drive space on my MacBook. And if I am ever not in a wifi-hotspot, I almost always have my ipod with me as a last resort.

 

[Particular]

did someone call the morale police? Because I don't recall stating or implying anything to suggest or require discussion regarding the legality of mine or anyone elses iTunes music collections. Ignorant is hijacking someone elses thread, if you want to discuss this please feel free to start your own.

 

[skyrider007]

this thread is on fire!

 

[Malcster]

I'll be taking over my iphone playlist, its just the essential 5 or so gig from my 40 gig collection.

Im a little more concerned about how the MBA's 1 speaker performs, gonna be headphones only for quality listening i think!

 

[zedsdead]

Music: 65gb (including some Music DVDs)
Movies: 52gb
TV Show: 176 gb (buying a few more seasons in a few weeks)

I bet though that most people do not have that much. I really want to get an external 1 TB drive soon and put iTunes on that so I can put most of my DVD library on their as well. The real problem with space is the TV shows. To but all of Seinfeld, 24, etc. takes up a lot of space. So I only encode right now what I watch.

As for what I plan to do with the Macbook Air, I simply will put a small amount of music (5-10 gb) in iTunes on there depending on what I am listening to at the time (I've learned to live with a minor selection since I got the iPhone). Maybe a movie and a few TV Shows in case I want to watch something. The new Rentals will also be a great way for content on the Air.

I really wish Apple set up a sync with your primary computer via usb. It would be an easy option to just hook up the Macbook Air to my iMac and sync over some things through iTunes.

 

[zippster]

well my current itunes library is just over 24gb, i usually copy the whole thing over to whatever mac i have (i bought one of each since september last year) and when my air turns up i will probably do the same, but i also have all my music on a portable hdd and also backed up on my NAS. ive been used to restricting what music i listen to since i upgraded from an ipod 5.5 to a 16gb touch! best purchase to date(until i ordered my MBA )

although 80gb isnt hugh its not small either and i dont think its the smartest move in the world to have your entire itunes library on your mac as i cannot imagine you will listen to 100% regularly enough to warrant the disk space. do as others have suggested.....get an external disk!

my 2ps worth


Andy..

 

[mich73]

Smaller Playlist on MBA

I'll just bring over my top rated playlist and leave it at that. That's what I did with my 80GB MacBook, when I had it. With all the laptops that I've had, I've never brought over my entire music library.

My library right now is 24GB, but I would never need all of it on the road.

 

[Domofloge]

I'd prob use a firewire cable to transfer the iTunes library. Wait... does the MBA even have that port? haha

 

[zedsdead]

I'd prob use a firewire cable to transfer the iTunes library. Wait... does the MBA even have that port? haha

LOL...Apple wants you to use Back to my Mac Which of course does not work for most people when on different routers. The 10.5.2 update better fix that because I really would like to be able to access my iMac when on the road with my Air.

 

[ahaxton]

I have a external hd I use wireless in the house and wired. I'm also going to add time capsule.

 

[AirmanPika]

When I was debating getting a MBA I was trying to work what I'd do with my 56GB of music. I figure iTunes would gladly access and display music on a mapped network drive and as long as you were on an 802.11n connection then playback would be no real issue. My bigger concern would be how well an iPod could sync with mapped data.

 

[mcvaughan]

All my content eventually resides on my two external NAS drives, so very little actual content will be there, except for my most recent podcasts.

 

[Capitanmerloc]

I think that Particular is right...

I do not have 10000+ gigs of music but I would love to share a single library over all the macs in my household... that makes it a Powermac g5 an MBA and 2macbooks and one powerbook...

I would love to have my phisical library on the G5 and share images of it on the other laptops keeping all my devices sinc to the main library... And I would like to be able to bring the music away with my portable without moving the whole library or have several unsync copies of it ...

Does anyone know how to?

 

[clayj]

Take a look here for some guidance. Short version: My MBA's iTunes accesses music and movie files stored on another machine. As long as the MBA can connect to that other machine, it works just the same as if the music and movie files were stored on the MBA itself.

 

[Krevnik]

Most are 100gb+? What planet are you from... I'd wager that less then 1/100th of iTunes users have more then 20gb, let alone 100gb on their hard drive. Not everyone pirates music or has immense owned collections. That would be literally tens of thousands of dollars in (legally) owned music.

Not everyone holds just music in iTunes.

My library is approaching 400GB, and only 10GB of that is music. I don't download shows for the most part either. I just have enough spare optical drives floating around that I can setup an entire TV season (or 4 movies) to rip at once while I am away doing something else.

 

[Wingnut330]

Can't you use a .Mac account to access your other machine on Back to My Mac? Then just connect to .Mac and play your songs that way. Not sure if you have a .Mac account but they aren't that much - $99 / year. If you have that and an internet connection, you should be good to go. Admittedly I haven't ever tried it but it should work in theory.

If you are on the same network as your main computer (at home etc) then you might be able to use iSync to sync the playlists you want to your MBA and just play those.

Another option is a small, portable HD that you can take with you, like an WD Passport. I think a 250GB Passport is about $130.

If those or some of the other options that folks posted above don't work, then you might be SOL. I would love to have a great solution to this as well, but the fact is the HD for an AIR is small, there is no other way to put it.

 

[clayj]

Can't you use a .Mac account to access your other machine on Back to My Mac? Then just connect to .Mac and play your songs that way. Not sure if you have a .Mac account but they aren't that much - $99 / year. If you have that and an internet connection, you should be good to go. Admittedly I haven't ever tried it but it should work in theory.

BTMM is painful. Painful. Getting your home router set up properly is one thing, and you only have to do it the one time... but any time you go somewhere else, you have to worry about whether their router will even support BTMM. Even if it does, a lot of places aren't going to let you change their router settings to allow BTMM to work.

 

[raghauler]

How to have your Air and itunes

I have been testing a setup that others have suggested on several other threads.
For details, do a quick search of the macrumors forums or google.

I am planning my new computing environment which will include a new Macbook of some type, probably an Air. I'll use the Air with Parallels to run a few Windows-only programs. I expect to keep most of my photos in the Air. For external storage, Time Capsule for backup and a USB for my iTunes database (attached to Time Capsule).

I currently have a 320GB USB drive. I moved the iTunes database to the external drive. I don't need iTunes files on the Air since I sync to the iPhone. I update my podcasts once a day when I get home or first thing in the morning. When I get the TC next week, my life will be easier since I will no longer have to connect the USB cables.

This setup only works if you don't need your library with you all the time i.e. you have some type of iPod.

This works for me. Your mileage may vary.


PS My iTunes database is at 25GB and growing, consisting mostly of my ripped CD collection (about 1/2 ripped).