The iPhone, iPad and iPod touch have changed the way we cope with really boring events, like long plane trips or budget meetings. You can, with the tap of a few buttons, download new movies, music, TV shows, books, and apps from wherever you are, as long as you are connected to the internet. Say your plane is delayed and you are stuck in the airport with nothing to do? Boom. You just grabbed two or three episodes of your favorite show on your iPhone, or the latest bestselling novel on your iPad.

But, once you get home, how do you get all of those goodies back on your Mac to watch later?

1. Adjust Your Settings on iTunes

The first thing you probably want to do is make sure your iTunes Store settings on your Mac are set to fully take advantage of iCloud syncing. As the cloud service continues to roll out, more and more content will be available for syncing and and streaming. Right now, if you have iTunes 10 or later on your Mac and iOS 4.2 or later on your device, you can get a lot of your purchases back to your Mac automatically.

First, open up iTunes and go to Store in the top menu bar. Here is where you want to make sure you are logged in with the Apple ID that you use on your mobile devices; manage this in the bottom set of options of the Store drop down menu. 

It's important you use the same Apple ID on your Mac that you used to purchase the content on your iOS device for this coolness to work! Keep in mind, though, this doesn't mean you can switch around from one Apple ID to another to download content from all your friends and family!

OK, next go to Preferences > Store. There you will se a series of check boxes. Check 'em all and let the magic begin. 

Here is the warning when you turn on Automatic Downloads if you had to change the Apple ID on your Mac to the one you used on your iDevice; proceed as you see best.

Once you have adjusted the iTunes settings on your Mac, most of the content you purchased on your iOS device with that Apple ID will begin to automatically download, right before your eyes. But not all content is treated the same way. Let's go through it...

2. Downloading Music, TV Shows, Apps, and Books

This is the future right here, people. Apple has turned on iCloud for syncing Music, TV Shows, Apps, and Books you've previously purchased through iTunes (or the App Store, or iBook Store). So, with your settings adjusted as above, every song, app, TV show, and book you buy on your iOS device will instantly sync to your Mac iTunes. In other words, if you are sitting in a popular coffee shop and you download a song from iTunes onto your iPhone, by the time you get home that song will be sitting in your Mac iTunes library. Those TV shows you purchased to ignore your boss at the airport? They will be all ready for you on your Mac before your plane even lands.

A very cool feature in your Mac iTunes allows you to mange these four content areas quite easily. When you open iTunes, go to the Store setting on the left menu. Inside the store you'll see, on the right and under "Quick Links", a new link titled "Purchased".

Clicking on that link opens up tons of options for managing your content. You can select to view your previously purchased Music, TV Shows, Apps, or Books, and then you can select to show "All" of your purchases, or only the purchases "Not In My Library". These are any purchases you've made with this Apple ID. Selecting "Not In My Library" is helpful to make sure that you have all of the content safe and secure in your Mac iTunes Library. If anything is missing, you can download right from this screen using the download button in the bottom right corner.

OK, so that covers your Music, TV Shows, Apps, and Books purchased from Apple. However, there is one kind of important category missing...

3. Downloading Movies

Movies are a little trickier. iCloud is not set up (yet) to sync movies this easily. However, by adjusting your settings as above, any movie you purchase on your iDevice will automatically download to your Mac iTunes -- the next time you log into your Mac iTunes.  

Let's say you buy a movie on your iPhone and download it...

Then watch it...

And now when you get home, you want to have the same movie on your Mac iTunes.

Well, if you followed the steps above, the next time you log into iTunes the movie will automatically start downloading! You will see "Downloads" appear on the left menu, and if you click on it, you'll see your movie loading right into your library.

Now, how easy was that? From here, you can move the movie onto any of your other iDevices via USB syncing, share it to any other authorized iTunes library on your network via Home Sharing, or stream it to your Apple TV. Sweet!

4. A Little Bit About Download Rules

There are a few other things to be aware of, though. Some formats you purchase on your iOS device will not be available in the same format on your Mac. In the example above, the movie purchased was in high definition. However, it will only download to the Mac in standard definition. The terms of service states that, "If it was purchased on the Mac first, it would be in high definition on all the devices." We get it: this is confusing and frustrating, but Apple has been good enough to prepare really large and complicated charts and grids to sort it all out for you. View them here, and know what you are buying, and where, and how you can download it on your other equipment.

As a work around, if you purchase a high definition movie on your iPhone with plan to watch it later on your big screen, you can use AirPlay to stream it to your Apple TV from the iPhone in high definition. Still, it would be nice to have the same format you paid for on all of your equipment, no matter which device you originally purchased it on, right?

For more information from Cupertino on policies and rules regarding downloading and syncing past purchases, check out the Apple Support document here.

Adrian covers daily news and the weekly "Law & Apple" column for Mac|Life.com. You can follow him on Twitter, if you want to.