Section 5.1. Your Very First Sync

5.1. Your Very First Sync

Connecting an iPod or iPod Mini is simple: Just plug its FireWire cable (or its dock) to the FireWire jack on your Mac. iTunes opens automatically and begins copying your entire music library to the player (see Figure 5-1). If you have Mac OS X 10.3.4 or later and a recent iPod model (or iPod Mini), you can use a USB 2.0 cable instead.

If you have a light 'n' sporty iPod Shuffle, on the other hand, odds are you can't fit your entire iTunes library onto the smaller player, which comes in much smaller capacities than the bigger iPods. If you don't want to manually add the music yourself, you can click the handy Autofill button that appears at the bottom of the iTunes window when your Shuffle is plugged in, as shown in Figure 5-2. Autofill does what it says, and randomly fills up your Shuffle with songs.

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Tip: If you don't want iTunes to appear automatically every time the iPod is connected, you can turn off this option in the iPod Preferences dialog box (Figure 5-3).

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