42. Transfer Your Music to Your iPodBEFORE YOU BEGIN 4 Connect Your iPod for the First Time 9 Import a Music CD into iTunes 20 Purchase Audio from the iTunes Music Store SEE ALSO 43 Use a Large iTunes Library with a Small iPod 44 Autofill Your iPod Shuffle 46 Find and Play Music on the iPod 42. Transfer Your Music to Your iPod Many iPod owners ' first glimpse of iTunes comes when they unpack their new iPods and install iTunes for the first time on their Windows PCs. If this describes you, the first time you connect your iPod to your PC is as described in 4 Connect Your iPod for the First Time . After you name and register the iPod, you're free to disconnect it or let it sit in the Dock and charge its battery. Your iTunes Library starts out empty, and there's no synchronizing that takes place at the end of that process. However, if you've been using iTunes long enough to have added music to it, the act of interfacing the iPod with iTunes means something different: synchronizing your iPod's contents with those of the iTunes Library . KEY TERM Synchronize To connect your iPod to your computer so that the iPod is filled with all the music in your iTunes Library , with all the up-to-date info tags and playing history; iTunes is similarly updated to match the information on the iPod's songs. Depending on your model of iPod, the process of connecting it to your computer can take any of several slightly different forms. The 1G and 2G iPods have a FireWire port on the top; you connect this to your Mac or PC using a double-ended, six-pin FireWire cable that either came with the iPod or that you purchased separately. 3G and later iPods (and the iPod mini) have a Dock connector on the bottom that contains both FireWire and USB 2.0 connections as well as audio output channels; this wide selection of data paths all located in the same connector means that you can connect the iPod to your computer using a FireWire or USB 2.0 cable (packaged with the iPod or sold as an iPod accessory by Apple) plugged into the Dock connector slot, orif you have onethe iPod Dock itself. This Dock accessory , which comes standard with some models of iPod and can also be purchased separately, is a white rectangular pedestal with a slot for the iPod to stand up in. When you put the iPod into the Dock, the Dock connector engages with the protruding piece inside the Dock's slot and connects the iPod in the same way that the direct cable does, while allowing you to keep the iPod upright (making sure that its back doesn't get scuffed). Finally, the iPod shuffle has a standard USB connector built into its body; you plug this directly into any available USB port on your computer (or the keyboard of your Mac). There's even a small Dock available for the iPod shuffle, if you want it to have its own dedicated place to sit and charge. NOTE When any iPod is connected to the computer, its internal battery is being recharged. It's best to leave your iPod charging at all times when you're not using it; see 51 About the Care and Feeding of Your iPod for more information. The first thing that happens when you connect your iPod to the computer is that iTunes launches and begins synchronizing your music (an icon on the iPod's screen warns you not to disconnect it during the process). New songs you've added to your iTunes Library are copied to the iPod's internal disk. The number of times you've listened to songs on the iPod, and their Last Played dates, are read into iTunes, and your library is updated accordingly . Finally, when the sync process is complete, the iPod resets itself to show the Main Menu, and iTunes tells you that it's safe to disconnect the iPod at any time. NOTE It's important to be aware that an iPod can only be associated (or "linked") with a single copy of iTunes. If you synchronize your iPod with iTunes running on your home computer, and then you try to connect it to your PC at work, iTunes will tell you that the iPod is already linked to a different computer. iTunes then offers to delete the iPod's contents and replace them with those in the current copy of iTunes Library . This feature is obviously meant to inhibit piracy, as it would otherwise be a simple matter to use an iPod to ferry copies of music illegally from one computer to another. However, it's not too hard to imagine legitimate reasons to want to copy music from the iPod to iTunes, such as restoring your music after a crash. See 98 Copy Your Music from the iPod Back to iTunes for more information.
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