ipod: Mac to Windows?

tulkas

A friend of mine with a Dell wants to buy an iPod. Later he wants to buy a TiBook. He is asking if he should buy a Windows or a Mac version of the iPod. I read that you can convert iPods to and from Mac and Windows versions, but have come across a couple apple tech articles that seem to disagree on mac to Windows conversions..anyone know the real answer?





From Apple's support pages:

[quote]

Answer: You can reformat your iPod for Windows into an iPod for Mac, but it is not possible to reconfigure your iPod for Mac to an iPod for Windows. This is because Windows does not support the HFS+ file system and therefore will not see the drive.

<hr></blockquote>



Another article has this title:

<strong>This document explains how to format iPod's hard disk so you can use it with a Windows-compatible or Macintosh computer.</strong>



And contains info of formatting to fat32....



odd

alcimedes

i believe that you can format either one of the two for the other platform. i think what they're saying is that if you have a mac, you can format a windows iPod for a Mac, but you can't format a Mac iPod for a PC. however, if you had a PC, the opposite would be true. you could format a Mac one for a PC, but not a PC one for a Mac.



it's just a HD with some software on it afterall. no hardware difference between the two.

the cool gut

The deal is, the software for the Window's version is only available on cd with the actual iPod. The windows software is no available for download ... the mac version is. So if you want an iPod that could work on both : buy the windows version, which comes with the cd and you can alway download the mac version when you want to format it for mac. Apple doesn't want people switching back. It may be possible to buy the windows software on cd from the apple store.

tulkas

Ok, kewl, thanks I will let him know.