When Steve Jobs announced that the iPod Photo was available the day of its launching — last Tuesday — a agile check of the San Francisco Bay Area ’s Apple Stores revealed that the equipment could n’t be found for dearest nor money . Ah , but what a difference a sidereal day do — at least for a few someone prosperous enough to track down the rare iPod Photos transport to select stores .
My fellow worker , Dan Frakes , was one such individual who located a small cache of 60 GB models at the new Oakridge Apple mini Stores ( whose staff , Dan separate me , were surprisingly helpful ) . Armed with a reference card and his editor in chief ’s words , “ You wanthowmany ! ? ” ringing in his pinna , he purchased two . One of them is in my possession .
Given that few of these iPods have made their way into the world , I thought I ’d offer a few initial impressions . This is n’t the full review that will follow when we ’ve had the time necessary to give the Modern iPod a thorough go over , but rather what I expected after Apple ’s presentation and how this iPod has met those expectations .
The Box
I ’ve care every iPod ever made and I noticed immediately how healthy the iPod ’s box seat was compared to other boxes o ’ iPod I ’ve lifted . That spare bit of heft comes from an iPod that ’s nearly as thickheaded as the original 5 GB iPod , the usual ingredients — a powerfulness supplying , USB 2.0 cable television service , FireWire cable system , Apple earbuds , and the minuscule boxwood of instruction ( which includes , for the first meter , the sort of white Apple decals that keep company a new Macintosh ) . The iPod Photo also includes a pier ( with atomic number 16 - video connector along with the common data / superpower connector and audio port ) , a case ( yes , the same $ 39 Apple case you buy severally for other iPod models ) , and a grave - obligation A / V cable that features both composite video recording and leave / right audio connective .
The Display
When lit indoors , the filmdom is delightfully bright . When the display dims down , however , it ’s very difficult to make out what ’s on the screen . Indoors I ’ve successfully understand the dimmed screen only by look at it slightly off - axis . I have n’t had a chance to use it in the daylight , so reading it alfresco may be easier .
The screen looks so bang-up when lit up that many will be tempted to ignore how petty stamp battery sprightliness they ’ll get from a constantly glowing iPod . Even though colour is only used to outstanding degree in the iPod ’s Play screen ( when album art is present ) , Calendars , Games ( Solitaire is in the end discernable enough to be playable ) , and , of course , Photo areas , all the computer menu see crisper thanks to the addition of color . Aiding this limpidity is a tall and thinner case interchangeable to what ’s found on the miniskirt . Oh , and the possibility screen with a silver Apple logotype against a black background is breathtaking .
Thumbnail images are very small — the iPod expose a 5 x 5 grid of thumbnails . Even at such a little size of it , you could differentiate photos if those picture are dissimilar . However , if you have variant of the same shot — you ’ve read a serial publication of pictures with a camera ’s speedy nip feature — you wo n’t be able to enjoin one trope from another .
The lucidness of “ full sized ” range depend on the brightness and composing of the shot . While my portraits photos await great — considering they are shown on a 2 inch display — it ’s tough to make out the details on a couple of photos taken during one of my “ gloomy landscapes under a cloudy sky ” sessions .
The Wheel
The click bike does n’t seem to have the same “ throw ” as the quaternary - contemporaries iPod or iPod miniskirt ( mean it does n’t feel like it descends as far into the principal unit when you press it ) . This makes not an iota of difference , just thought I ’d mention it . And speaking of minutia , the click that the iPod emits is slenderly higher pitched than the press earlier iPod .
Expectations versus Reality
The iPod ’s manual of arms cleared up some confusion I had . For lesson , I assumed that if you bond a media card reader to the iPod , it would not only download depiction from the reader but also display those pictures on the iPod . Not so . The iPod stores its pictures in extra thumbnail files . These file oblige multiple pictures that are display on the iPod ’s silver screen and an attached video output machine ( TV or camcorder ) . When you spell pic ( either from a media lector or by storing the full resolution images on the iPod — an alternative in iTunes ) those photos are lay in in a Full Resolution folder inside the Photos folder that seem at the root level of the iPod .
The iPod - to - television connection mold well , though you have to be careful about the purchase order you perform sealed activity . For representative , if you have a picture on the iPod ’s screen and string the composite cable between the TV inputs and iPod , that picture wo n’t bolt down up on the TV . Rather , you have to make the connectedness and then begin a slideshow by choose a exposure album and pressing period of play .
The line is n’t overly long — about five feet — so if you attach it to a TV with the expectation that you ’re go to manually flip through your photos by pressing the iPod ’s Forward control , be cognisant that on a big - projection screen corner you ’re going to feel a fiddling too close to the action . An iPod remote control would be very welcome in this site .
Doing Windows
I want to test this more thoroughly before issue forth to a last judgment , but I found this iPod to be far slower to sync on my Windows microcomputer than on my Mac . Where it took the Mac about 30 moment to synchronize a medicine library of closely 3,000 songs , using a FireWire connector , the personal computer easily remove double as long . Again , these outcome are so far out of the average for any other iPod that I ’ve owned ( and I ’ve possess them all ) that I really need to take another couple of turn at this .
Speaking of Windows , the manual throw a lilliputian panic attack into me when it state :
“ If you are using your iPod Photo with a Mac and require to employ it with a Windows personal computer ( or vice versa ) , you must restore the iPod Photo software for use with the other computer using iPod Photo Software Update [ … ] . you could not switch over from using iPod Photo with a Mac to using it with a Windows PC ( or vice versa ) without erasing all data on iPod Photo . ”
This has never been the case for other iPods . If you format your iPod for Windows , it mounts on a Mac and ferment almost exactly like an iPod format for the Mac ( it syncs more slowly and you ca n’t bring up from it ) . The same is true of the iPod Photo . Also , a Mac - initialize iPod Photo will work on a Windows PC if you have the late version of Mediafour ’s XPlay 2 ( translation 2.0.11 ) installed .
Oh, and Music
No giving surprise on the legal front . When the first batch of 4th - generation iPod appeared there were some distortion problems reported . My iPod Photo exhibited no such anomalies ( but then my two 4 thousand iPods were fine too ) .
The Hidden Stuff
If you ’re a substantial iPod geek you be intimate that you could press certain button combining to readjust the iPod ( the instructions for doing so are now printed on the “ Do n’t Steal Music ” wrapper , by the agency ) , flip the iPod into Disk Mode , and enter the symptomatic blind . There are a couple of changes here .
Reset is the same Select / Menu combination you know and love as is the follow - up program line , Disk Mode ( press Select / Play when you see the Apple logo ) . The Disk Mode screen , however , is n’t backlit and is black and white rather than colour ( the lettering is also modest ) .
The symptomatic screen has been wholly redone ( you access this by resetting the iPod and then compress Select / Back when you see the Apple logo ) . I did n’t notice any particularly cool new tests on the screen but it ’s better organized than in the past tense — offering a pecking order of menus versus the straightforward single - menu complex body part of other iPods . textbook here is smaller as well and backlighting only come on for a pair of the tests .
More to Come
And there you have my abbreviated tour of the new iPod Photo . Stay tune for our judgments on how it fares after wide examination . And do n’t forget to mark off out our photo picture gallery of the iPod Photo if you have n’t already .
