Keeping iTunes and iPhone synced on a mac and a pc

[gajanan]

A very frequent question, but was wondering if anyone had luck doing this the following way:

I have an iMac and a Macbook pro at home and a pc at work.
Currently the only way i sync and transfer my music is through my macbook pro.
Is there a way i could duplicate the itunes on my macbook pro to my imac so no matter where i plug the iPhone (imac or macbook) the files stay synced.
Then i wanted to duplicate the itunes again and put it on my pc, so that when i am at work i can sync the apps, music etc i download there to the macs at home ?

Is this even conceivable ? I do know that the apple system is always a one way road but if i had to implement the above, then how would i go about doing it ?
2 Macs and 1 PC all sync my iphone data where ever i connect and sync my iphone.

Thanks
Gaj.

[iaindxb]

As far as I know you cannot sync with more than one machine.

[gajanan]

But you can authorize them right ? 5 machines at a time ? So then technically syncing should be possible ?

[iaindxb]

the authorisation I believe is to allow you to play DRM'd content that you bought on iTunes on up to five machines. This means that if you buy content on iTunes and you give it to someone else they won't be able to play it (unless they are authorised). Basically it tries to prevent piracy.

When you plug in an iPod/iPhone into a computer that it is not synchronised with it will tell you it is not synced with this computer and then ask you if you want to re sync with this specific computer. Now if your libaries/contancts/bookmarks etc are the same on every computer then you could re-sync every time but this will take some time.

[iaindxb]

Is there a way i could duplicate the itunes on my macbook pro to my imac so no matter where i plug the iPhone (imac or macbook) the files stay synced.

I assume you are running iTunes 9 on both? You can now move music between up to 5 computers. Home sharing. I have found it very handy. You can see other peoples libraries and even narrow it down to what you don't have in your library.

[fangpyre]

Iaindxb is correct.
You can sync the iTunes on the different machines.
But I am not sure if music that wasn't purchased from iTunes will sync.

The iPhone and iPod touch allows syncing to more than 1 machine.
But its tricky, and sometimes it will refuse.
I don't know the mechanics of it.
But one thing is that every aspect (music, data, video, etc..) is dealt with separately.

[michl]

Another possible solution would be to use a good sync program to keep your iTunes library and iTunes setup files etc. totally in sync between your 2 Macs. Perfect duplicates, in other words.

I heartily recommend ChronoSync for this. In fact you could also have your entire user account kept in sync (assuming both Macs are running the same version of Mac OS X). The process can also be fully automated...

[gajanan]

Thanks for the heads up guys. I tried to make an exact copy of the itunes folder on my imac from the macbook, but for some reason it just kept syncing and syncing .. basically it was suck for over an hr. I think i'll try the chronosync method.

You might think apple would allow a 2 way traffic for data transfer atleast now. Its high time they did. Saves folks like me who wana go experimenting