iTunes question

[Gregg]

Not very technical, but there's a computer involved....

Does you music have to be stored on your hard drive in order to play it through the Mac's speakers?

Put another way... Can you sit down with your iBook, in communication with an external drive where your music is stored, and play that music while working in other applications.

Having never used iTunes for anything, I wouldn't know.

[Xairbusdriver]

Good question. I would hope Apple cleared that hurdle when they fixed the same problem in iPhoto! But Hardly ever use it except for burning a disk...

[RNKIII]

I BELIEVE, that iTunes looks in 'specific' locations/libraries for the music to play.

Now if the 'specific location / library' is on a HDD other than your internal / system HDD then it should have no problem playing it.

In the iTunes Preferences, under the 'Advanced' tab, under the 'General' settings there is a window that will allow you to 'tell' iTunes where to look for its music, and this may be a way of diverting it attention to look at the external..


Bob K.   rnkiii

[kimmer]

Can't believe I might know the answer to this.

When launching iTunes (7.x and above), hold down the OPTION key. A dialog box will come up and ask you about choosing a library. Your default should still remain your default (mine has at least), but now you can navigate to any iTunes library.

[Al]

Yup, I always alot a separate partition for my music.  Never on the same start up drive.  As long as your external is plugged in and shows up on your desktop you can use it.  My Intel iMac is using a USB drive for music files.

[Gregg]

thanks to all

My son was impressed that iTunes still keeps a list of the tracks on the external drive. So, now that there is more space on his iBook, he's decided not to replace it for awhile. Don't know how he comes by that tendency!

I bought him Leopard so he'll be up to date when he starts grad school. Today, he ordered a new car!

[Mrious_be]

QUOTE(Gregg @ May 16 2008, 02:42 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Put another way... Can you sit down with your iBook, in communication with an external drive where your music is stored, and play that music while working in other applications. Having never used iTunes for anything, I wouldn't know.

Apart from the fact that you will have to change your library in the preferences, it will play yes.
You can store the music wherever you want and connect it whatever way you want to your mac, the only thing that is needed to get the music to play on that mac is your authentic password (and therefor your permission to play that music on that mac.

I played my music through our local wireless network on Smiley's computer.
It works, as long as I gave Smiley's computer permission to play it by typing in my password.

[Gregg]

QUOTE(Mrious_be @ May 18 2008, 03:26 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Apart from the fact that you will have to change your library in the preferences, it will play yes.

I think he figured that out. Glad to say my money wasn't wasted on tuition!