troyhulbert wrote:
I was wondering if it is possible to have the same itunes account/data on 2 computers??
I have an imac which I have at home but im currently on the road a lot I purchased a MacBook Air.
Just want to know if possible and how I can use the same account on both computers so I can update and use all the songs on my iphone while im away!
is this possible?
if so how?
Yes, it is fairy easy.
The first thing you need to do is get yourself a decent portable hard drive to hold your iTunes data. This would be all your media as well as the iTunes library file. Once you have it, Name it something unique so that it always mounts as the same volume name on both Macs, I personally use "iTunesData" as my volume name. Next, on your PC that already has your media & library, Go to your iTunes preferences and point to this new external drive volume to be the location for iTunes to store your media ("/Volumes/iTunesData/Music" for me), and have iTunes "keep your library organized". Next, consolidate your library and also if you haven't done so yet, "reorganize" your iTunes folder. One those are done, all of your media, and your apps, etc should be stored on your external drive. This will leave only 2 things on the internal drive of your computer now. The first is your iTunes Library, and the second is your iDevice backup. The next step is to quite iTunes on this Mac, and move the iTunes library from your Music folder to your external drive as well. When you open iTunes next, it will tell you that it can't open the iTunes library and offer to create a new one for you or to let you locate the existing one. Chose to find your library and browse to the one you just copied to the external drive. Now iTunes should be running from your external drive with minimal data stored on the Mac internal drive. Your first PC should now be setup, and you can test by quitting iTunes, ejecting the external drive, and trying to launch iTunes again. It should give you that error again about opening the library.
Now, you are ready to repeat most of these steps on the second Mac. Start with the consolidation and reorganizing of the iTunes library/folder. I would make a backup copy of the external drive at this point for safety, then point the second computer to the external volume for storing its media. Exit iTunes, delete the local library. Open iTunes and point it to the library on the external drive. Now your second PC should be setup to use the exact same iTunes library and media files as the first. Yes, you can only access one iTunes instance at a time sine they both need the external drive to be attached to work, but this way, either PC should be able to sync the iPhone, and since they are using the same iTunes library, you shouldn't have a problem with iTunes telling you that the phone is synced to a different installation of iTunes. Whichever computer has the external drive is the master and should be able to sync.
I have tested almost all of this myself, but alas, I only have one Mac so I can't fully test it all to make sure that there are no problems with the logic.
