I am writing this new blog because the management of pictures on iPod, as designed by Apple, is abyssal. Zillions of threads on support forums, including those at apple.com, are ignored. Trying here to set a central repository of the multiple problems (and few solutions) when trying to manipulate pictures on the device.
Don't get me wrong. I love Apple products and purchased my first Apple ][ in ..1982. Got many of their products since. But the iPod just stinks when it comes to pictures handling. I purchased an iPod Touch 64GB recently and now regrets my old Palm TX..
What the problem is ?
Obviously Apple forgot to properly address the pictures when they designed the iPod. Obviously , the iPod Touch does NOT have a built-in camera (contrary to the iPhone) but its pictures management features are only designed for photos taken by a built-in camera. There is no sensible way to manage pictures stored on the Mac/PC hard drive.
Especially missing:
- iTunes shrinks all synchronized pictures to useless low-resolution images. Zooming-in (using both fingers) once on the iPod returns a blurred image
- iTunes requires synchronization of all pictures from a single folder (or all pictures from iPhoto - more on that later). No way to select which pictures, or multiple folders.
- iTunes (including the latest 9.0) does not allow the flexibility of manual synchronization of pictures, as is now possible with music files and movies
Worse still, the iPod cannot be simply used as an USB storage device for photos: no way to mount the iPod on the desktop, to drag/copy pictures files, etc. For reasons beyond the most elementary logic, Apple designed the storage area for photos in the same protected area where musics are uploaded. Yes, there are copyright issues on musics and one can understand the need to protect against unauthorized copy. This is NOT the case for pictures !
Bottom line: the iPod cannot be seriously used as a pictures viewer, or as a USB storage backup device either.
Personnally I had planned to use the iPod as a pictures viewer for professional uses with my customers; something the Palm TX provided 10 years ago.. Bad choice !
A few words about iPhoto: I do not know anyone who is seriously using this software. Check its size: 250 MB for the application ! Awfully slow. This is possibly the heaviest program ever built by Apple, certainly with millions of dead lines of code. And no help from iPhoto: synchronizing to iPod returns the same sense of uselessness.
Caution: iTunes also more or less secretly can take a lot of disk space on your Mac/PC when synchronizing pictures: basically it appears a bitmap copy of each picture is created in your pictures folder for whatever reasons. This can grow extremely large.. Example:
- submit a 800 KB JPEG picture for synchronization by iTunes
- when done, a 40 KB (no way to tell the exact size) low-resolution image will have been uploaded on your iPod
- and a 3 MB file in the iTunes-specific cache on your Mac/PC
Crazy, isn't it ?
Now check this:
Can Apple explains to us, the customers, how we can upload and manage 90,000 pictures ?
Silly marketing, on the edge of a lie.
Enough rant, this blog is made to stay alive. I will update regularly with hints, workarounds and advises how to better use the iPod in a photos-rich environment. Stay iTuned..
Alexandre.
