iPod and iTunes: The Missing Manual, Third Edition

Your Very First Sync

For most people, the goal with any new electronics purchase is to get the new toy working right away so the fun can begin. For new iPod owners, getting to The Fun can be a very short wait. After unpacking the iPod and all its accessories, charging it up as described in Chapter 1, and installing the software, you’re ready to dive in.

The First Sync with iTunes

You may already have Apple’s free iTunes program and plenty of songs stored in its music library. If so, the first synchronization between iPod and computer can be astoundingly simple. As soon as you connect the new iPod to the Mac or PC, iTunes opens automatically and begins copying your entire music library to the player (see Figure 2-7).

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 (see Figure 2-8).

Figure 2-6. It’s not quite as dramatic a moment as watching a butterfly emerge, but the transformation of a brand-new iPod into a Windows iPod is beautiful in its own right.Top: The installer asks whether you want to “configure” the iPod–that is, reformat it with the Windows FAT32 disk-formatting scheme.Bottom: Once the program installs iTunes for Windows on the PC, it offers to sniff around for existing music files, including any songs in the Windows Media Audio format. Although the iPod can’t play WMA ...