Filed under: Audio, Utilities, Macintosh, Productivity, Apple, Shareware
Syncopation synchronizes iTunes between Macs
by Jason Clarke Oct 26th 2008 at 11:00AM
It seems like the days of the family computer have come and gone already, and more and more people have their own individual computer to use. In my house, everyone over the age of 3 has one (plus a couple of extras), and keeping data synchronized amongst them all is a bit of a nightmare. Our main two machines are the Macs that my wife and I use. In our family, I'm the techie one, so over the years I've spent a lot of time ripping our CD collections into MP3 files. Though she certainly enjoys listening to music, she's never bothered to do the same on her machine. The other day she decided that she should have access to all of the music that I've been dutifully ripping from our CD collection, and since 1/2 of the CDs were hers in the first place, she's right.
So, what's the fastest way to get my iTunes library over to her machine, while maintaining the song ratings and playlists that we've come up with together? I found an application called Syncopation that fits the bill perfectly.
Syncopation does exactly what I've described - it allows you to grab an entire music library from another machine over your local network. It even supports synchronizing podcasts, movies and TV shows! The process is very straightforward:
- Install Syncopation on both the machine you want to synchronize from, and the machine you are moving the music to
- Set your preferences; do you want to transfer videos and podcasts, or no?
- Subscribe to the other machine that should be showing up in Syncopation's browser
- Press the Sync button, and wait.
- And wait, and wait, and wait.
You'll have to keep Syncopation running on all machines that are actively synchronizing while they perform the transfer. Syncopation supports up to five Macs, though the trial verison only supports two, and the trial is good for 30 days. I see myself purchasing this tool when my trial period is up, because it makes keeping our iTunes libraries in sync a snap.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
RazorD said 11:42AM on 10-26-2008
Anyone know of something which can do this between a mac and windows pc?
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umass02061 said 1:12AM on 10-27-2008
i agree with you razor there needs to be something for macs to windows, that would be awesome
Mika said 1:39PM on 10-26-2008
Another solution: move all your MP3 files on a computer ("the server"). Install Firefly Media Server (it's free). Your music will be available instantly on every computer (Mac or PC) with iTunes as a shared library.
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dave said 2:56PM on 10-26-2008
there needs to be a windows version
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Jash Sayani said 3:06AM on 10-27-2008
You can just install a Sync software like SyncBackSE for Mac, and then select "Users/YourName/Music/iTunes" as the Sync folder and it will keep the iTunes libraries on both computers synced !!
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