Newbie: Sharing files between accounts?

[miked_in_canada]

Hi there, I'm brand new to mac. I just got an iMac G5!

After putting in an extra stick of RAM and loadinbg up all my music and photos from my PC, I'm now ready to start putting this thing to work.

I just have one problem: my girlfriend and I are sharing this bad boy.

So we need to be able to share this thing. I know I can put accounts into tiger (sort of like XP), but I want to make it so we're sharing the same library of photos and music. It would also be nice to have our own independent calendars but be able to share them such that I could see what sorts of appointments she's got going on and she can get a handle on my class schedule etc.

Can anyone point me in the direction of how to get this done? When I tried putting in an account before, it wouldn't let me share music or photos (or at least I didn't do it properly).

Thanks in advance,

-MikeP.

 

[bousozoku]

At least with iTunes, you should be able to duplicate the music folder structure and put it into /Users/shared and then, point iTunes there in both of your accounts. I would expect being able to do the same with the photos but haven't tried.

 

[Jo-Kun]

first of all don't sotre files that need to be shared on the desktop (since that's linked to the user) second... in iTunes -> prefs you can make a new folder just in the root of the HDD and make that the default folder for both users iTunes prefs... iPhoto... I don't use it... but probably you allso have a setting in the prefs to do so in the way Itunes does...

I don't know about the users/shared folder... since I'm the only user on this mac...

only one remark: it's possible if one user puts new tunes or photo's... they will not be in the other user's library...

 

[miked_in_canada]

Thanks for your help folks.

Just to tie this thread up, I should note that I have found a solution to both problems at this address:

http://captnswing.net/howto/itunes/
http://captnswing.net/howto/iphoto/

I was really surprised that Apple hadn't made this easier. You'd think this would be a common task. Anyway, it can be done and after tinkering a bit with the above solutions I managed to get iTunes working perfectly. Each user can now add/delete songs, playlists etc to the same library and all the changes appear for every user.