[kman42]

I found multiple threads about using 2 iPods with a single Mac, but none of them offer a satisfactory solution. The answer is always to use the same iTunes 4 Music LIbrary, create separate playlists and then sync each iPod to it's own playlists. This works great if you use both of the iPods, but fails miserably if you and your wife each have your own iPods and don't really have overlapping musical tastes.

The problem with sharing the same iTunes 4 Music Library file is that my wife and I both use ratings extensively to generate Smart Playlists. We both like having Top Rated Songs, Not Played Recently on our iPod. The problem is that her top rated songs are my bottom rated songs. So, we each have our own iTunes 4 Music LIbrary file and iTunes Music Library.xml file located in our own user accounts as you would expect. [We do share the same Music Library folder in the Shared user account, but that is irrelevant for this discussion. I think...]

Anyway, I have my own playlists and she has hers and everything is dandy until we start connecting our iPods. We almost always have both iPods plugged in to charge and to sync our changing Smart Playlists. We do a lot of user switching under 10.3 (best feature ever, BTW). The problem is that when I log in her iPod syncs to my account and vice versa. Now I can just make sure that I am the last person to log in before running off with my iPod and it will be sync'd appropriately because it syncs my whole music collection although it is annoying to have to log her out and sync before going for a jog.

It is a bigger problem with her iPod because it is only 5GB and must be sync'd using the Only Sync These Playlists option. Since none of her playlists are in my account, her iPod basically gets deleted when I log in. The really bummer part is that when she logs in, none of her playlists are selected anymore and she has to open up the iPod prefs and select those playlists again.

I don't think there is a good solution for this, but I thought I would throw it out there. This sort of problem is only going to get worse as iPods get cheaper and households pick up additional units.

The iPod currently handles being plugged into a foreign Mac quite well by asking if you want to sync it. Why doesn't it do this on a per-account basis? It should be possible to assign an iPod to a specific user account. After all, OS X gave us separate accounts for a reason. Why would Apple assume that we wouldn't have separate iPods too?

kman

[blybug]

I don't think this will solve your problem completely, but maybe you can adapt it so your iPods will act sort of how you want...

I use the "Comments" field to help sort out whose songs are whose. In our family we have Keith, Amy, and Children. So for a song I like I put a "K" in the comments, for her songs an "A" and for songs the children like a "C". Most of the songs just have a "K" but many are tagged "KA" or even "KAC" and there are a few that are just "A" or "C" or even "AC".

In addition to a number of other custom playlists based on genre, eras, etc, iTunes maintains 3 smart playlists, Keith's Songs, Amy's Songs, and Children's Songs that simply look for K,A, or C included in the comments. This allows us to share one music library, have overlapping songs on our playlists, but also keeps them mutually exclusive.

When my wife syncs her 5GB iPod, she just syncs "Amy's Songs" and "Children's Songs" mostly because she uses hers in the car. My 40GB iPod syncs to everything. Since the comments field is maintained constant within the music files' ID3 tags and the ratings and recently played are unique to your user accounts, maybe within your own accounts creating a smart playlist that includes songs with your initial in the Comments that are highly rated and not recently played (and for your wife limited to a certain amount of GB) would sort of keep things sorted out.

The main difference with our setup is we do not keep separate user accounts. So whenever anybody's iPod is plugged in it syncs up with "their" songs. I'm not sure exactly how the switching accounts aspect would affect this setup (and good question about why Apple hasn't implemented the same "question" about syncing across different accounts as it has for different computers), but I'm pretty sure if you could live without using the ratings and just assigning songs you like via the "initial in the Comments" method this would work OK.

The other nice thing about this is that a couple times when my iTunes database has gone sour it was a snap to recreate our personal playlists because of the Comments field.

Good luck!

[tooki]

Why not use the AC adapter for charging one iPod? Whoever's logged in charges their iPod on the Mac, and the other person charges on the AC adapter.

Since every iPod ships with an AC adapter, the absolute most you'd need to get, even to have both iPods charging simultaneously regardless of who's logged in, is FireWire cables.

tooki