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Cleanly moving iTunes across computers, post-iCloud era
Scrublet
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I've been dealing with an annoying situation where my personal laptop (Windows 7) is 5 years old and awful, but is my iTunes authorized device for my iPhone/iPad. My work laptop (also Windows 7) is awesome, and I use it for everything at this point and never turn on my personal laptop. However, that's led to a situation where it seems like half my life is spread across the two laptops. I plan on buying a new MBP post-refresh but I don't want to deal with this until whatever time that happens.
I want to turn on iTunes on my work laptop, and get all my music and apps transferred across in the simplest way possible. I want to get my iPhone and iPad tied to this laptop. Now the music part of this is easy, particularly since I'm going to use this as an opportunity to test out iTunes Match. The apps are what I'm here asking for help with. During the iCloud/iOS5 switch, I had some issues that ultimately resulted in all of my app data getting wiped. This lost me some saves in several games (I will probably never go back and finish Chaos Rings thanks to this, for example). I'm trying to avoid a similar situation happening to me here.
To sum up all of this neatly, I have:
Personal Windows laptop bound to iOS devices with out-of-date app data and apps, plus my music
iCloud account with iOS device backups that have up-to-date app data and apps
Work Windows laptop that doesn't even have iTunes installed yet
iPhone 4, iPad
My current plan:
1. Plug in both the iPhone and iPad to the personal laptop and bring all the app stuff up-to-date
2. Turn on iTunes Match, upconvert and clean up all my music, and make sure the iPad is syncing properly (iPhone doesn't matter as much here since my 32GB can't handle all my music/apps/photos...I have to budget)
3. Install iTunes on work laptop, allow it to download all apps and music
4. Attach the iPhone and iPad to the work laptop
Step 4 is where I'm concerned that it will want to wipe the device of its app data. I understand it will want to wipe the music from it, but that's fine. iTunes Match will fix that. Any first-hand experience accomplishing all this since iOS5 would be appreciated. Also any solid do's or don'ts on iTunes Match would be helpful too. Thanks!
I want to turn on iTunes on my work laptop, and get all my music and apps transferred across in the simplest way possible. I want to get my iPhone and iPad tied to this laptop. Now the music part of this is easy, particularly since I'm going to use this as an opportunity to test out iTunes Match. The apps are what I'm here asking for help with. During the iCloud/iOS5 switch, I had some issues that ultimately resulted in all of my app data getting wiped. This lost me some saves in several games (I will probably never go back and finish Chaos Rings thanks to this, for example). I'm trying to avoid a similar situation happening to me here.
To sum up all of this neatly, I have:
Personal Windows laptop bound to iOS devices with out-of-date app data and apps, plus my music
iCloud account with iOS device backups that have up-to-date app data and apps
Work Windows laptop that doesn't even have iTunes installed yet
iPhone 4, iPad
My current plan:
1. Plug in both the iPhone and iPad to the personal laptop and bring all the app stuff up-to-date
2. Turn on iTunes Match, upconvert and clean up all my music, and make sure the iPad is syncing properly (iPhone doesn't matter as much here since my 32GB can't handle all my music/apps/photos...I have to budget)
3. Install iTunes on work laptop, allow it to download all apps and music
4. Attach the iPhone and iPad to the work laptop
Step 4 is where I'm concerned that it will want to wipe the device of its app data. I understand it will want to wipe the music from it, but that's fine. iTunes Match will fix that. Any first-hand experience accomplishing all this since iOS5 would be appreciated. Also any solid do's or don'ts on iTunes Match would be helpful too. Thanks!
Scrublet on
0
Posts
http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/125679/iphoneipod-thread-nothing-clever-to-say
You may have to resynch your iPad and iPhone because they may not see it as the "same" library, but that's just a matter of reselecting everything and putting apps back in order (worst case scenario). There's also the possibility that you won't, but I wouldn't bet heavily on that.
Final option is that you transfer your library to a networked/external drive, and point your work laptop to read that drive as your iTunes library. I do that right now, simply due to the sheer size of it. I eventually plan on switching to a NAS so that I can have multiple computers accessing the library if necessary (thinking towards the future and eventuality of getting married/having kids/etc.) and won't need iTunes running on any of them to do home sharing. Benefit of using an external drive is that you can swap it from laptop to laptop without having to resync your iPad or iPhone since its still the same library.