I also have an old macbook pro 2011 with the CD/DVD player.

When I migrated my things from Itunes to this new macbook I noticed anything from CD’s has not come over to my 2019 macbook pro.

Needless to say this macbook pro does not have a CD player. How do I transfer/airdrop my CD files from itunes to the new macbook pro.

Hi Bob,

Does your Mac recognize your iPhone 11 Pro? Trying to figure out if it’s just not syncing or if it’s not seeing the iPhone at all.

Do you use iCloud or subscribe to Apple Music monthly services? If you use iCloud or services like Apple Music to keep your content up to date across all of your devices, some syncing features via iTunes and Finder are automatically turned off. Take a look at your syncing options and make sure they are checked.

Try syncing manually, but first, make sure Apple Music’s Sync Library (iCloud Music Library) is toggled off for both iTunes on the computer and on the iPhone, then try syncing again by selecting your music manually.

If that doesn’t do anything, consider backing up your iPhone and setting it up as new again

Backup your iPhone 11 Pro
Restore it as a new device
Restore that backup (the one you made in the first step)
Try syncing again

Regarding your question about importing your full iTunes library into that new phone without using iTunes, there are some third-party apps that claim to do this. We haven’t tested any, but some of our readers do use these and had success. You can also manually move music out of your iTunes Media folder.

However, any music files in iTunes that you purchased with copyright protection built-in will likely NOT play due to those music rights protections. Any music you imported into iTunes from your own CDs, DVDs, etc. or purchased without copy restrictions should play without restriction.

Finally, for backing up your Mac we recommend Apple’s own Time Machine. You can use Time Machine with external drives and also networked drives–but it does not backup to iCloud (at least not yet.)

Apple’s current reasoning behind this is the time it takes to backup and restore a Mac is much longer than an iPhone or iPad AND its a much more complicated operating system and environment. Although iOS and iPadOS have some problems restoring from iCloud, a Mac iCloud restore would likely be much more prone to errors and flaws. We expect that to change in the coming years–but it appears we aren’t there yet.

You can however currently backup your Mac’s Documents, Desktop, and Photos to iCloud.

Most of us at ATB use Time Machine–but we also back up to two different drives for redundancy and in case a drive fails.

We also recommend Carbon Copy Cloner for folks that don’t want to use Time Machine or who want a bootable backup solution for their Mac. Like Time Machine, it requires an external drive. It’s currently a one-time fee of about $40.

If you want a cloud-based solution for your Mac backups, a lot of our readers with Macs use BackBlaze. And it’s pretty affordable with unlimited data storage (currently) at $6/month, $60/year, or $110/2-years. Prices are per computer–so if you have multiple Macs, it does cost more!

I have a problem that I’m hoping you might make a suggestion to fix or workaround.

For various reasons, I’ve not been synching my iPhone with my MacBook Pro running Mojave 10.14.6. My iPhone 6+ recently died & I replaced it with a new iPhone 11 pro.

I took the SIM card from my 6+ & put it into my 11.

A few of my iTunes songs were on the SIM card, so I attempted to synch with my new phone. My new phone won’t sync with my laptop until I upgrade to Catalina.

I’ve not upgraded to Catalina, & since I really don’t want to lose the use of my 32bit apps, I’d like to delay the upgrade for as long as possible.

Are you aware of any way to import my full iTunes library into my new phone without using iTunes?

I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s facing this issue. From what I gather, Apple has replaced iTunes with 3 other apps. My calendar, notes, etc all synch fine.

It’s just the iTunes music files that won’t do so. Please advise. Bob

PS: As long as I’m asking, I back up my iPhone to iCloud. Why Apple won’t permit me to back up my laptop in the cloud as well is really frustrating.

I currently have a ridiculous amount of cloud storage space. My laptop data & apps can’t back up to the cloud.

Any suggestions as to how to back up the data on my laptop?

In the past, I used SuperDuper.

A few years back I had a disastrous upgrade from one version of the iOS to the next. The SuperDuper software said I had 790 GB of HD data, whereas my internal HD holds a mere 750GB. Apple couldn’t help & it took months before I recovered most of my data from the backups I made to external HDs.

It also took a long time to restore my apps.

I suspect I lost a lot of data but had no way of knowing. If possible, it’d be really nice not only to get a recommendation on how to automatically backup all the data but have a restorable copy of all my apps & whatever system software I have to restore me to full functionality when (not if) an eventual crash happens.

Hi Chip,

We haven’t run into this exact scenario before, so we are not exactly sure of the outcome of updating to Catalina. But we think you’ve made the right call in backing everything up–it’s likely those additional files are not needed but it can’t hurt to have them.

(1) I always worried about sending my large (35000 song) library into the cloud, so I never allowed Apple Music to ‘Sync’ my music – is that a valid worry or can I do it?

(2) I’m on Mojave and in addition to a CCC clone of my internal drive and BackBlaze, I’ve copied my entire HD>Users>Me>Music folder to an external drive. It’s 475Gb. I copied it all instead of your recommendation because my iMac does not *have* a HD>Users>Me>Music>iTunes>iTunes Media folder.

Instead inside HD>Users>Me>Music>iTunes I have 3 folders: Album Artwork (2.76Gb), iTunes Music (471.56Gb)), and Previous iTunes Libraries (which has a 27.3Mb file called iTunes Library 2018-09-25.itl inside). That folder also has some files alongside those 3 folders, like iTunes Extras.itdb (2.9Mb), iTunes Library Genius (662.9Mb), iTunes Library.itl (29.7Mb), iTunes Library.xml (80.2Mb), and a few small temp files dated from 2012-2015.

So, have I been right to copy that whole higher-level folder, or should I just copy the slightly smaller “iTunes Music” folder and not worry that it’s not called “iTunes Media”, or will this possibly be a problem when I go to Catalina and it might be expecting an “iTunes Media” folder?

I just made the upgrade to Catalina by mistake and am facing the same problem. Have you ever found a solution?

How do I go about getting that stuff back? Seems to all be untouched in my iTunes folder still?!

In fact I have been collecting selected Podcasts for some 20 years and have thousands, most of which I still enjoy, but many of which are no longer available from the Apple Store.

This is disappointing as I would like to import my entire Library of Podcasts into iTunes Podcast, but it seems this cannot be done. There appears to be no way to select the target directory from my hard disk where I store all of my Podcasts.

Any suggestions?