Why can't I...

Mattus

Mattus

Mattus

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Joined
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... sync music to my iPhone from more than one iTunes library?

I hate this restriction. It's completely nonsensical. All I want to do is transfer some music from my PC to my iPhone... but I can't, because my iPhone is synced with my MacBook, so iTunes tells me that if I want to sync files from my PC, it will erase the iPhone and start afresh. Now I have to transfer 10GB of music from the PC to the MacBook just to put it on the iPhone.

Why on earth can you only sync with one computer at once? In fact, isn't the whole idea of having to be 'in sync' about ten years out of date, given that there's so many other ways to get content onto an iPhone these days? Why can't I just copy the damn files?

99% of the time I love my iPhone. The other 1% is when I have any contact with iTunes, which normally results in me wanting to throw it out of the nearest window.

/rant
 
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All of my music is on my fileserver. I just point iTunes on my MBA at the shared folder. Its frustrating not being able to sync on multiple devices, but I don't duplicate my music that way.
 
Mattus said:
... sync music to my iPhone from more than one iTunes library?

I hate this restriction. It's completely nonsensical. All I want to do is transfer some music from my PC to my iPhone... but I can't, because my iPhone is synced with my MacBook, so iTunes tells me that if I want to sync files from my PC, it will erase the iPhone and start afresh. Now I have to transfer 10GB of music from the PC to the MacBook just to put it on the iPhone.

Why on earth can you only sync with one computer at once? In fact, isn't the whole idea of having to be 'in sync' about ten years out of date, given that there's so many other ways to get content onto an iPhone these days? Why can't I just copy the damn files?

99% of the time I love my iPhone. The other 1% is when I have any contact with iTunes, which normally results in me wanting to throw it out of the nearest window.

/rant
Click to expand...

Enter iTunes Match stage left.
 
Simple answer is, copy your iTunes preferences files to the new location. Essentially you trick iTunes into thinking its syncing with your old library.

There are plenty of ways to get iTunes music from multiple libraries just search google.

Why can't you just copy the music you want into you own library?
 
Having music split across 2 locations is a pretty messy way of working tbh.

Just transfer your music to your mac via external hard disk/drop box etc and drag/drop them into the library on your MBP. You may need to authenticate the music if they were associated to a separate apple Id, but that's it. Then just use your mac exclusively for storing your iTunes library.

No need to sync over the wire anyway these days, if you download direct on your iPhone it will auto download on your mac, and vice versa.

I personally think iTunes is just fine, no problems at all with it tbh.
 
Basically I had a load of music in lossless format which I wanted to compress to 128kbps and put on my iPhone. I did it on my PC because that's where I store my lossless music (my MBP doesn't have enough disk space), and because my PC has a faster CPU for the conversion.

All I want to be able to do is sync the iPhone primarily to the MacBook, but be able to copy music from the PC when I want to. This isn't something which should take a hack to achieve. It's 2011. People have multiple computers.

What annoys me most is that it's an entirely artificial restriction which means I can't do with my £400 iPhone what I could do with a £10 MP4 player from Argos. Normally I approve of Apple's design decisions and find Android ugly and clumsy, but I just can't see a good reason for this limitation to exist.
 
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Just use manually manage music. Then you can put on music from two computers.

Also, the reason you can't sync with two libraries is obvious - it's a sync. It can't be the same as two different things. That's where the manually manage option comes in.
 
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PardonTheWait said:
Just use manually manage music. Then you can put on music from two computers.
Click to expand...

Nope, you can't - or at least, I can't.

I have the first computer set to manually manage music. But when I select 'manually manage music' on the second computer and try to save the setting, the dialog pops up telling me that the phone can only be synced with one iTunes library at a time, and I need to erase the iPhone to sync with the contents of this iTunes library.
 
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I believe that you can transfer music from multiple machines to an iPod, but not to an iPhone or iPad. This makes me even more convinced that the restriction is entirely pointless.
 
Whats stopping you from having the same music files on both computers?

Or, rather, all your music on one computer with only a selection on the other.
 
This really does my head in so MUCH, why cant apple just allow us to put music from our different computers on to our Iphones, its really p*sses me off having this issue.
 
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