iPod Photo Thoughts
Will one of you Apple slave - I mean customers - please tell me why you'd want to carry around photos that you didn't take with your iPod in your iPod?
And I wrote a long series of comments:
Because it's a firmware upgrade and a few license agreements with Hollywood studios away from syncing for-pay video content (iTunes already shows videos cross-platform, and QT got revved along with the iTunes update).
Because Kate loves the security of carrying around a backup of all her music AND photos.
Because (wishful thinking?) it's another firmware upgrade away from being able to plug in firewire to be able to capture/transfer photos directly to iPod (lenses are expensive, leave it up to the people who are good at those).
Because some people don't have computers at home...but they still have an iPod and now, gee willikers, it does photos, too (OK, this one is a stretch...but I seem to see a lot of a-typical iPod users, and have one/two anecdotal stories of people buying computers to go with their iPod...and both were PCs)
Michael Gartenberg seems to agree with my reasoning for no video (yet) -- that the market just isn't ready. There isn't enough "consumer" content (which to me means legal video downloads).
Russell Beattie thinks Steve Jobs is wrong about mobile video -- based on his experience of the phone/mobile market. Sorry, I don't buy it. Postage stamp sized video is not something that people will pay a bunch for. But here's my use case.
Apple gets legal downloads. Lots of free stuff (music videos, movie trailers, commercials, etc.) that is "small" -- plays OK on the little screen. The legal downloads are movies, that take up about 1GB, give or take (you can probably get good quality at less than that, especially if there are some fancy new codecs). That means 60 movies at once, but more likely a half-dozen at most. People could watch them on the little LCD. But, since the iPod Photo does video-out, people watch it where they like watching videos -- on a TV.
Graham (I think it was Graham -- it's anonymous) did a long rant about the new ipods over in the forums as well.
But why are people so upset? If there are better solutions...then they'll win. Me? I might buy one. Actually, more likely as I said above, I'd buy one for Kate. And hope for firmware upgrades :P
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Ipods are not that bad.
Ipods are not that bad. Everything should be compared.... I’ve compared lots of data at various sites of Apple competitors. For instance, http://go.shopsansa.com/ Sansa players have much less features and the sound quality is not like an iPod.
If a backup of photos is desi
CDs are hard to work with. They are slow, they only hold 650MB (you try fitting a wedding of RAW format files on one)...this is why hard-drive-based photo storage is booming, Apple is far from the only one in this market.
Good luck...I have not seen any proof that you can preview photos you import using a Media Reader. Everything I have been able to dig up says if you use a media reader you cannot see the photos until they are moved to the computer and synced back to the iPod. You will still need to take a laptop. If you really want to do what you want to do, you'll need something like a FlashTrax or a CoolWalker.
Simple,
Simple,
I would use the iPOd photo to backup and review my photos on a trip when I dont take my computer with me. All I would take is a Media Reader (Belkin), the iPOD and my Camera. Photo's are safe and I can view them anytime I want. I go home, I copy the photos to my Mac and I'm done.
This is a god send for digital photographers who like a bit of music too!
AM
To the poster above who said:
"Of course, 90% of my mp3 music is backed up on the original CDs I own, the rest is backed up on the internet and can be retrieved the same way I got them in the first place."
Well, try lugging those CD's around when you travel - and see how long they last - the Internet is'nt available "everywhere" you know. :-)
Oh yeah, watching video.
Oh yeah, forgot to address the other points - watching video on an
iPod. Either this is a market that has remained untapped by previous
attempts to discover it, like those portable mini televisions some
people have, or it isn't a market at all. Watching a video, especially
what most content is moving to - widescreen - is boring, I see no
market for an iPod that can play video, that's just a lame idea.
The
market for that is an elegant, small video recorder that people can
plug directly into a TV and play back what they record, aka a digital
camcorder. We have those already, but what we don't have any iPod-esque
editions of cameras or digital camcorders, and THAT is the huge market
Apple is missing out on.
I think someone also made the
competition argument - Apple came into the portable music market
competing with all sorts of CE vendors like Sony, Creative and others
that derrive all of their livelihood from portable music products, you
would think they would be far more aggressive in competing with Apple,
and yet Apple has snatched victory from them in only two product
revisions. Apple could easily do the same thing in the digital camera
and camcorder market and just as easily beat out those slouches. ;)
Yup, was me.
If a backup of photos is desired, then what is different about burning a CD and asking a friend or family member to keep it at their house? I can see the backup bit, and showing off the latest pictures from parties, but here is my take on iPod alternatives.
There are three key factors that make the iPod a success:
- Very small hard drives
- Simple interface
- Compact, thin industrial design.
These features will benefit cameras and portable video recorders as well, just as they have portable music, computers, game consoles, DVRs. Camcorders, in particular, are a great challenge, but would benefit significantly from Apple's characteristic touch. Cameras, on the other hand, will benefit because hard drives can store, as we see with the iPod, a huge amount of photos. Flash memory, which is used in just about all digital cameras, still suffers from storage capacity of the biggest photos. Cameras are approaching 15MP now, so file sizes are getting into the tens of megabytes in size, which will mandate hard drives eventually. Flash memory is still on a cost curve well above that of the hard drive.
I was expecting that Apple's digital hub scope was broader than one gadget at a time, and believe it is, but they lose ground the more they delay. Lenses are a core competency of camera manufacturers, sure, so do a cross-industry collaboration. Zeiss lens, Apple digital camera, fine with me just as long as Apple plans on doing it.
Apple's brand recognition with the iPod may not sell strange alternative-platform computers, but it WILL attract attention when they offer other platform-independent hub products., like a camera and digital camcorder.
ipods
iPods, whether picture or not, seem pretty nifty. I'll consider getting one when they hit the $100 mark as it's all they're really worth to me. Of course, 90% of my mp3 music is backed up on the original CDs I own, the rest is backed up on the internet and can be retrieved the same way I got them in the first place.