A few years back Apple ran a promotion stating how it had never been easier to switch from a PC to a Mac.  For the most part I would say this is a true statement.  Unlike the old days, most of the programs you’re used to are easily found, or there is something similar you can run.  Overall I am finding the experience of switching my primary computer from a PC to a Mac to be a painless and easy experience.

… and then it came to iTunes.

I’m a music junky and I have a collection of music that is far larger than any human should even contemplate having.  On my PC I had my music files on an external drive, but my iTunes and podcasts ran off of my primary C drive.  I was expecting some hiccups with this setup, but nothing that I couldn’t overcome.  I had moved the collection between various PCs a few times, so I didn’t see why this should be that difficult as it was essentially an Apple product coming “home” if you will.

I started doing some research online and what I found was a mish-mash of haphazard ideas and workarounds.  Seeing as I had paid for Apple Care, I gave them a call … for the first time ever an Apple employee gave me a less than satisfactory answer and actually suggested I call Microsoft to see if they had a tool for converting the files to the required Mac format.

Are you kidding me?  You want people to switch to Mac, but you don’t have a simplified process for moving one of your flagship products?  That ranks up there on the idiotic scale in my book.

So I ended up going to a bunch of forums and asking questions, and much to my surprise, nobody came up with a good answer.

While doing this research I came across an ad for a programs called CopyTrans TuneSwift.  It was $15, but it promised to move your iTunes from a PC to a Mac with ease.  At this point, with days of research under my belt, I figured I had nothing to lose.  I made a backup of everything to another external hard drive just to be safe (which took nearly a full work day), ran the program (which took nearly a full work day) and then did the restore on the Mac … which took about 90 minutes.

End result?  Everything is on the Mac and working without a hitch.  Everything ended up on the main drive, which isn’t exactly what I wanted, but to be honest, at this point I just didn’t care any more: It all moved, it’s all working and I’m just happy.

Apple: Take note of this.  You want people to switch to a Mac, you need to make it far, far easier to move iTunes.  The process was silly, and the fact I had to spend $15 on a program to do it was just idiotic.  Want an idea?  Buy the rights to TuneSwift, because for whatever reason, they got the whole thing to work.