iLife '04: The Missing Manual

Chapter 5. The iPod Connection

Itunes is a lot of things to a lot of people. But for hundreds of thousands of people, iTunes is primarily the loading dock for an iPod. Once connected to the Mac, the iPod is ready to accept whatever you want to give it.

This chapter is dedicated to that concept of iPod as Satellite to Your Computer. All you need is the FireWire or USB 2.0 cable for the connection that gets songs and files off the mother ship and onto the ultraportable, ready-to-go iPod.

Your Very First Sync

Connecting the iPod is simple: Just plug its FireWire cable (or its dock) to the FireWire jack on your Mac. iTunes opens automatically and begins copying your entire music library to the player (see Figure 5-1). Or, if you have Mac OS X 10.3.4 or later and a recent iPod model (or iPod Mini), you can use a USB 2.0 cable instead.

Tip

If you don’t want iTunes to appear automatically every time the iPod is connected, you can turn off this option in the iPod Preferences dialog box (Figure 5-2).