[Paco Loco]

I am thinking about getting an iPod for use at home and at work. The thing is that at home I use a Mac and at work I use a PC.
I want to be able to sync the iPod with my Mac at home to load my CD's onto it and sync with my PC at work to load music purchased over the web.

My question is can an iPod be used on both Mac and PC?
In all the Apple literature it always says "compatible with Mac or PC" - it never says "Mac and PC".

My suspisions about this were aroused when I was fiddling with a friends iPod, looking at his settings, and I found the screen where it says how much memory is free etc and it said "formatted for PC"...

Any light you can shed on this would be much appreciated!
P.

[Eriamjh]

Not sure, but I think the new 3G iPods are both Win and Mac compatible at the same time. The whole formatting thing went away. Can anyone confirm it?

[tooki]

No, it gets formatted for Windows when you use it on a PC. A Mac will, however, see a Win-formatted iPod, or so I have been told.

In any case, it won't help you -- the iPod is specifically designed to not even let you copy music from two Macs: an iPod can have one, and only one, computer as its home base, which is the only way to copy music on. You can easily set another computer as a home base, but if you do, all the music on the iPod is erased first.

tooki

[Cellery]

I use my iPod mini with my G5 at work and a VAIO subnote at home, and they work great. However, I use MacDrive software on the PC (needed it for something else) that lets the PC see the HFS+ formatted iPod. I can put music onto the iPod from either computer and redo playlists with no problems at all.

[templetalker]

Originally posted by Cellery:
I use my iPod mini with my G5 at work and a VAIO subnote at home, and they work great. However, I use MacDrive software on the PC (needed it for something else) that lets the PC see the HFS+ formatted iPod. I can put music onto the iPod from either computer and redo playlists with no problems at all.

MacDrive software? This is great! What is it? Thanx mate.

[Cellery]

MacDrive (www.macdrive.com) lets a PC see HFS+ formatted volumes, I use it with my iPod and a LaCie FireWire drive daily. It works transparently in the background, and has never given me any trouble. I use the G5 at work as my CD-ripping machine and my PC laptop at home as my iTunes Music Store machine and the iPod mounts on both machines and I can transfer music and playlists with no problems. There may be another way to use an iPod with both a Mac and a PC, but I just had a copy of MD for work purposes and it works well for me.

[Dex13]

Originally posted by tooki:
In any case, it won't help you -- the iPod is specifically designed to not even let you copy music from two Macs: an iPod can have one, and only one, computer as its home base, which is the only way to copy music on. You can easily set another computer as a home base, but if you do, all the music on the iPod is erased first.

tooki

Uh ... me and my friend download songs from both of our macs from itunes to our ipod, and I have never encountered what you have said...

Or am I just not getting it?

[templetalker]

Originally posted by Cellery:
MacDrive (www.macdrive.com) lets a PC see HFS+ formatted volumes, I use it with my iPod and a LaCie FireWire drive daily. It works transparently in the background, and has never given me any trouble. I use the G5 at work as my CD-ripping machine and my PC laptop at home as my iTunes Music Store machine and the iPod mounts on both machines and I can transfer music and playlists with no problems. There may be another way to use an iPod with both a Mac and a PC, but I just had a copy of MD for work purposes and it works well for me.

Cellery, first of all, cool name This is genius! My school has only Mac's and it was always a smorgus board when it came to an issue like this. Aweeeesome to know. Much Thank You & Noodles.