86. Synchronize with an iPod  BEFORE YOU BEGIN 82 Purchase Music From the iTunes Music Store 83 Import (or Rip) an Audio CD 84 Create a Playlist or Smart Playlist
 SEE ALSO 101 Synchronize Your Palm PDA and Other Devices
86. Synchronize with an iPod 
The iPod, iPod mini, and iPod shuffle make up Apple's own family of digital music players and the defining geek toys of our generation. With its capacious internal hard drive (or flash drive, in the case of the iPod shuffle), its small size , and its intuitive button-and-wheel interface, it has defined the field of digital audio players and spawned a horde of imitators. None of these, however, integrates so well with downloaded digital music as the iPod doeswhich should come as no surprise, as iTunes and the iPod are designed specifically to complement each other. An iPod is designed to synchronize with your iTunes music Library simply through the act of plugging it in. However, a few complicating factors can arise, such as when you have more music in your iTunes Library than can fit on your iPod's internal disk. For these situations, a few alternative operating modes are available. | 1. | Connect the iPod
If your iPod has a Dock, place the iPod into it. If it has no Dock, plug the FireWire or USB cable directly into the iPod's socket. In a few seconds, Mac OS X recognizes the iPod and iTunes automatically launches. The iPod appears in the Source pane, and iTunes automatically synchronizes with it, replacing the iPod's contents with your current iTunes Library . If this is the first time connecting an iPod to your computer, and unless it's the flash-based iPod shuffle, all the songs in the Library are transferred to the iPod; this process can take 10 or 20 minutes, depending on how large your music collection is.
iPod shuffle owners will notice a feature called Autofill at the bottom of the iPod's content display pane; this set of controls works like the Party Shuffle feature to choose a random selection of songs from a specified playlist or source to copy to the iPod shuffle. Each time you click the Autofill button, a new grab-bag of music selected to match your iPod shuffle's capacity is copied to the device. Autofill is not available for other kinds of iPods.
When the iPod's screen returns to its normal menu display and iTunes reports that it is safe to disconnect the iPod, feel free to do so. Do not disconnect the iPod while songs are being transferredthis can result in lost data. It's a good idea to leave the iPod plugged in as long as possible because doing so keeps the battery charged. (The iPod's lithium-polymer battery holds its charge best if you keep it charged as fully as possible, and don't run it until the power runs out before recharging it.)
| | 2. | Select Playlists to Synchronize  | If your iPod doesn't have enough capacity to hold all the music in your Library , a dialog box tells you so. Open the iPod Preferences window (to do this, select the iPod by its name in the Source pane and then click the iPod button at the bottom right of the iTunes window; alternatively, click the iPod icon in the iTunes Preferences window). Select the Automatically update selected playlists only radio button.
| TIP The Preferences window does not display the on-disk size of each playlist; you must use trial and error to select a set of playlists that will fit on your iPod. Note that as your playlists change (particularly if you add more songs to your Library that are automatically added to a Smart Playlist), the playlists might collectively grow larger than your iPod's capacity. If this happens, you'll have to revisit your playlist selection in the iPod Preferences window. In the scroll box, select the playlists you want to synchronize with your iPod. Every time you connect your iPod to your Mac, these playlists and all their contents are copied to your iPod. | | 3. | Manually Copy Songs to Your iPod
You can configure your iPod so that it doesn't automatically synchronize with your iTunes Library at all. If you select the Manually manage songs and playlists radio button in the iPod Preferences window, you can select and manipulate the songs on your iPod within iTunes as you can any other music source. You can then drag songs and playlists from your iTunes Library directly to the iPod's icon in the Source list. This way, you can specify exactly which songs to put on it. This method is laborious but exact.
| NOTE If you set up your iPod to be manually updated, you must eject it (use the Eject button at the bottom right of the iTunes window, or click the Eject button next to the iPod in the Source pane) before you can disconnect it. This is because in manual mode, the iPod is treated as an external hard drive, and iTunes no longer unmounts it automatically when it's done updating its music.
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