How to sync new Apple hardware?

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In a moment of rashness yesterday i ordered a new Ipad and also an imac. I currently have the ipad 1 , an iphone 4 and a non mac laptop.

The iphone i have is in dire need of updating and my current ipad is full and syncs with my laptop.

Now heres the question(s)...

Whats the best way to organise syncing all my devices with the new imac? The iphone needs updating and i would want many of the apps on my current ipad to transfer across to the new ipad.

Whats the cleanest way to do this without losing content/apps from the mobile devices?

In many ways i want to start afresh with the imac as the main machine but at the same time i dont want to write off previous purchases on the phone and old ipad.

Any thoughts are much appreciated.

 

[Turbo-G]

All old purchases of apps are linked to your account, so you can download again on any machine for free anyway.

I would simply update your iPhone via your PC, and then just plug both the iPhone and iPad into your new iMac and sync it with that.

However, you will need to reformat both devices for use with the Mac so you're prob best to sync with iCloud, reformat both devices and register them against your Mac. Then simply restore both devices from iCloud.

 

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Ah right ok thanks. That seems relatively straightforward. Im not even using iCloud yet so i will get that fired up prior to sorting everything else out.

Basically i just dont want to mess up the order i do things so i thought asking first would avoid any possible pitfalls!

 

[Turbo-G]

Yeah iCloud is great, even better once you're on your new iMac. Your address book will be sync'd with you contacts on your mac, same for calendar and bookmarks etc. Apps can be re-downloaded over the air any time from the app store from your "purchased" list.