Just moved from a PC to a Macbook Pro and now my Ipod Classic gets stuck on iTunes "syncing" even though I have it set to manual. Please help!

Please help. I recently bought my first Mac (a Macbook Pro 15-in Mid 2012) and my iPod classic will not work properly when I plug it into my computer and open the newest version of iTunes. It played just fine on my old PC with iTunes 10. I have not updated the software on the iPod since I bought it a few years ago and even if I wanted to update it I couldn't becuse once I plug it in it gets stuck saying "syncing with iTunes." Well, I have it manually set so that I can add/delete whenever I want. So I don;t understand why it is giving me this message and getting stuck. I've looked around the web and tried to install iTunes 10 but because I have the newest version already installed it will not let me replace it with 10.

Does anyone know how this can be resolved?

Thanks.