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Back a few years ago my wife and I both had iPods and we both wanted most of the same music. So, I moved all our Music in one location. Then we both set the location of our libraries to the same location (/Shared iTunes Library/iTunes Music) ... The problem with this is that both users can't be connected to this library at the same time. Not a huge deal seeing I'll probably still be using my MBP most of the time. But, with AppleTV it might be nice to keep iTunes up most of the time on this system.
I guess we could just have our own libraries seeing space really isn't an issue... Just wondering how you guys are handling your libraries for multiple users using the same computer?
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We share one library amongst 4 users on my iMac, in my login. Everyone shares their music and apps. We each choose which songs/playlists to sync.
I sync my contacts/calendars with my login. The rest just sync with Google exchange for OTA sync.
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It should be noted that none of this has anything to do with Lion or iTunes 10 per se. We have enough folks here already that are skittish about BOTH that further angst shouldn't be fed.
My wife and I have separate OS X accounts so that when we sync with our respective iPhones (within each person's iTunes) we only get our individual Contacts, Bookmarks and so on synced. And we share music and apps (same AppleID) but don't have any of that stuff duplicated. Here's how:
1) Point each person's iTunes Media folder to the same location, like you have done.
2) In each person's ~/Music folder, alias the correct iTunes folder there and delete the existing iTunes folder, after you're sure it's OK to do so. FYI, the real "iTunes" folder---the one you moved into Shared---can be named anything you want (so long as iTunes' preferences knows about it, see #1 above) but the iTunes alias for each user needs to be named iTunes.
3) Take whomever's iTunes wasn't the original "master library" you started this journey with and drop the now-shared iTunes Media folder into iTunes' "LIBRARY" area (upper left of iTunes window) so that it knows for sure what's in the shared library now. You may wind up with some duplicate listings (or a lot) but once you purge the fakes for this user this won't be an issue going forward. The payoff will be significant.
I suppose you could avoid fake duplicates initially on this second person's iTunes if your first deleted all the songs from it, but that could be bad news if you did it wrong and wound up deleting all the songs from your iTunes as well. Proceed cautiously here, or just deal with duplicates later one time.
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So for example we have our shared iTunes content on an external drive. What was once the iTunes folder happens to be named MomDadiTunes (because that drive additionally has another iTunes library on it named KidiTunes ...) iTunes for both users is pointed to the iTunes Media folder within MomDadiTunes but we each have an alias in our ~/Music folders named iTunes that points to MomDadiTunes.
Doing the above causes each person to share the other's playlists, which won't be ideal, but will ensure that whenever one person makes a change to the library it's reflected in the other person's iTunes. If you skip Step 2, whenever someone adds, deletes or changes a song in iTunes the other person will never see that change until you perform Step 3 again.
Let me know if that doesn't make sense.
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Might be a good idea to back up everything, including library and xml files first in case you need to totally recreate your iTunes library from scratch.
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iCloud could help with some of this, for some people.
Need to read up on syncing my iPhone on two computers and if it's a bad idea or not.
What you're really doing in that case would be syncing two same-owner OS X accounts. After that, using the iPhone with either Mac would be trivial. I wish you well---syncing two OS X accounts would represent a lot of tedious busywork.
Unless ...
You run Lion Server on the iMac and set up the MBP to use a mobile account. When the MBP is away from the server, say at Starbucks or a friend's house, it's a normal Mac with all your user stuff present. When it's at home and you log in, you'd be logging into the Server and your user accounts would sync.
I've glossed over some parts and ignored a few gotchas but that's the gist of it.
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Having said that, I'd first go with the simple approach: use only your MBP unless you're doing something iTunes-related. Only then do you need to log into the iMac, and you store nothing in your user account there except for what's in your Address Book. And wait until she's away from it to sync your iPhone. Your Address Book on your MBP remains useless, as do your Safari bookmarks, which are synced on the Mac you never use. Not ideal by any means, I know. Again, iCloud may help mitigate that.
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You want to sync the contents of the same library? Make a user account just for iTunes streaming and syncing. Keep this account logged in at all times.
