Fiona has a new MacBook Pro, and I wanted to copy her iTunes library from her old iMac to the new MacBook Pro. She's got around 60gig of music and video in the library, and I was trying to figure out how to shift all that data easily. I found various ideas on line to do with shifting the library index file, importing, consolidating etc. And was a little phased by the idea of copying 60gig over the wireless network.
In the end found the perfect solution:
- Hook the two machines together with a Firewire cable
- Restart the iMac (source machine) while holding down the 'T' key. This starts the Mac in Firewire mode
- The source machine appears as a drive on the destination Mac
- Delete the iTunes library folder on the destination Mac
- Drag the iTunes library folder from the source Mac
It took about an hour for the 60gig to move over, which isn't too bad.
Started up iTunes on the new Mac and the library was there and available with no fuss. Synced up her iPod to the MacBook Pro and she was off and running.
David Eedle 
Hi David
I use Supersync – I have a unix sever in the house, a macpro, and my macbook pro, and for $30 they are all in sync, playlists and all – http://supersync.com/
Greg
Hi Greg
Just been reading about Supersync. Sounds seriously cool, thanks. I might have to give this a go.
David
Would this work in transferring Applications and Documents?
Hi George
You can copy any files so documents shouldn’t be a problem. Applications might be a bit more complicated because you are not ‘installing’ them, just copying them. Guess you’d have to experiment.
David
David:
I have a new iMac and want to copy iTunes from my MacBookPro to it AND keep the library on the macbookpro. Both computers are authorized through Apple. How do I proceed?
Mike
Hi Mike
I would have thought you just copy the library over as I described. You’ll wind up with the library on both machines.
David