Got new iPhone, tried to move iTunes library to different iMac, no luck?

OK, so this is a complicated situation. My wife and I went out to get ourselves new iPhone 5s today. When we got home, we discovered that our laptops, which we had been using as our backups on iTunes, was considered out of date. We already traded in our old iPhone 4's at the store to get discounts.
So we looked around and learned that we could use an external hard drive to transfer the entire iTunes library to our desktop iMac, which is much newer and less than 2 years old, with Mountain Lion installed. I copied my wife's iTunes folder as instructed, and moved it to the iTunes folder on her personal account on the iMac. No problem.
My wife then went ahead and plugged her iPhone 5 into the iMac. We ran into some troubles such as authorizing the iMac to accept the purchases and so forth, but while we were doing this, we noticed that the last update had been 2010, when my wife had her 3GS. I thought that wouldn't be a problem, and even made sure that the correct iTunes library was selected by pressing option key while opening iTunes.
So my wife syncs her iPhone. Alas, iTunes went to the 2010 backup. However, when I press on "Apps" on the iTunes store, it shows all of her current apps from her iPhone 4. It also shows some of the books in iBooks that she saved. We have NO music files at all since we are deaf. Her contacts list is not showing on the iTunes, though.
Did we make a major goof here? Our laptops still has all the iPhone 4 info - how do we get that from the laptop's iTunes to the iMac iTunes, and then from iMac iTunes to the new iPhone 5? We thought doing the external hard drive way would be OK - it does seem to have transferred all the info but iTunes on iMac is acting like the last update was 2010.
HELP!

http://osxdaily.com/2009/09/11/iphone-backup-location/ - "in Mac OS X your iPhone files are backed up at the following location: ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/"
in OS X:
~(your home directoy)/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/

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Well, this is a problem, because the only material you can transfer from your iPhone (using only Apple software) is material you purchased in the iTunes Store.
To do that, plug your iPhone into iTunes, then choose File > Devices > Transfer Purchases from iTunes' menu.
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Trying to move iTunes library to new external hard drive

I'm trying to move my iTunes library to a new, second, external hard drive and I'm not having much luck. I have two G-Tech 500 GB external drives. One is my Time Capsule and the other one I plan to use to house my iTunes and iPhoto libraries -- I want to free up space on my internal drive.
The iPhoto library moved over to the new disk with no problems. iTunes, on the other hand, keeps hanging up, with the "beach ball of death" and a lot of file error messages. I began moving my iTunes library onto the external drive by following these steps:
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• Click the Advanced Tab
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The plan was to then go back over to iTunes and input the folder location in the iTunes Preferences so iTunes can find the library again. However, the simple drag-and-drop just isn't working. My iTunes library is about 10,000 songs and videos; if I have to do this album by album (which seems to be working, but I'm still having the occasional hang-up and freeze) it will take weeks! Has anyone had this problem before, and if so, did you find a fix?
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the support article Dennis pointed you to would consolidate your media files to the external but keep the iTunes folder on your startup disk.
another approach would be to copy the entire iTunes folder to the external and run your library from there (this assumes that all your media files are currently in <MacintoshHD>/users/<yourname>/music/iTunes/iTunes music).
so, if you're willing, start over yet again. before you proceed, erase the external using disk utility and make sure it is formatted for Mac (make sure the partition map scheme of the drive is GUID and the volume is Mac OS extended (journaled)).
now copy the entire iTunes folder (not just the iTunes music folder) to the external using the finder. when the copying has finished, launch iTunes while holding the option key, click on +choose library+ when prompted, and select the iTunes folder on the external.
once you're satisfied everything worked as expected, you can delete the contents of your local iTunes music folder.
JGG

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I just bought an external hard drive. I first copied my entire inter hard drive to the external hard drive. Next, I began to move my iTunes library to the external hard drive by changing the location in the advanced tab in iTunes preferences and then by consolidating the library, but then I stopped it after it began because I though that it was unnecessary to recopy the files if they had already been moved when I originally copied the entire internal hard dirve. So I simply went to the advanced tab in the preferences again and moved the location to the 'same' folder that it had been set to on the internal hard drive, but it was now on the copy of the internal hard drive on the external hard drive. I thought that iTunes would just realize that the music had changed its location, but it did not.
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Should I just try to move the library the correct way as I had originally tried and stopped, even though some of the songs are 'lost'?
iMac G4 1Ghz Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Fixed my problem!

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HT1338 got the new iphone 5 which needs itunes 10.7. i have searched for soft    software updates and am informed that it is all up to date! This is not a fact as I am currently on osx 10.5.8. How do I get my imac to acknowledge that there are updates ava

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First you need to research all the problems people are having with the higher OSX versions, & make sure you have a bootable clone of what you have just in case.
then you must get 10.6 if they still have it, install it & update to 10.6.8 so you have the App Store to buy & download the huge 10.8 Installer.
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After admittedly only a quick read the one thing you don't say is how you are trying to make this move. Most people with moving library issues do it the wrong way. Plenty of web sites tell you how to do it the wrong way.
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