Special
Report
iPod Photo: It's not just about digital music anymore
By David MacNeill, executive editor
From
the day I was handed my first iPod at the press launch event in
Cupertino in 2001, I suspected this device was about more than
digital music. Why? It's the intentionally ambiguous name. What's
an iPod? It's whatever Apple says it is - nothing more, nothing
less.
In addition to being the term of venery for cetaceans, a pod can
be almost anything that holdsˇ well, almost anything. You can
have a pod of pods, if you want to get technical. The "i" comes
from Apple's iMac computer, of course, and it stands for "internet"
and, one can safely presume, for the "I" that means you.
Put
'em together and you get iPod, which has become universally synonymous
with "MP3 player" or, far more precisely, "digital audio player".
Now we have the lovely iPod Photo ($499-$599) which holds and
plays not just your digital music library but all of your digital
photograph albums as well.
Do you see a marketing image problem brewing? Apple, I suspect,
will position the iPod Photo as a high-end companion product for
a year or so, then roll color displays and photo-syncing capabilities
into every iPod model except for the rumored entry-level flash
memory-based model. Initially positioned at the high end of the
spectrum as a kind of "iPod Plus," it will slowly seep into the
market's collective mind that iPod means "portable digital media
player." And by the time they all figure it out, they'll all want
one so bad they can taste it.
I can relate. This 40GB iPod Photo in my hand is one of the sexiest
gadgets I've ever seen, and everyone I've shown it to displays
a similar reaction. Bluntly, who in their right mind wouldn't
want to carry all their music and all their photographs in a stunningly
beautiful, 6.5 ounce piece of high tech jewelry?
Proceeding on the assumption that you are in your right mind,
let's take a close look at the iPod Photo.
Perception deception
It is remarkable to me how common sense does not work on the scale
of handheld tech objects. While a wristwatch can vary quite a
bit in size and weight without drawing too much attention to itself,
the difference between an iPod that is 0.69 inches thick and one
that is 0.75 inches thick is surprisingly vast. Compared to my
20GB iPod, which has a thickness of 0.57 inches, holding the iPod
Photo 40GB is like holding a small camera instead of a small tin
of Altoids. You really feel this difference right off the bat,
and of course your cases, docks, and any other dimension-dependent
accessories will not fit right, if at all. I should say at this
point that the 60GB model is the same size and weight as the 40GB,
the only difference between them being the capacity of the micro
hard drive inside and $100 in price.
It's not in the least surprising that the iPod Photo is a tad
bigger and heftier than its fourth-generation clickwheel cousins,
as the color display and battery are larger out of necessity.
The 40GB and 60GB Toshiba drive mechanisms are physically thicker
than the 20GB part that resides in the smallest of all third-
and fourth-generation iPods models.
But the extra size is worth every teensy gram. Beyond the obvious
joy of using a bright 65,000 color iPod display, you also get
a fifteen-hour battery life playing music or five hours of playing
photo slideshows continuously. That's some serious power on demand;
if you need more than this every day, you might want to consider
going on a media diet, getting a mate, or both.
In
all other dimensions, the new iPod Photo is the same: 4.1 x 2.4
inches of smooth chrome metal and white semi-translucent polycarbonate.
The display is the same 2-inches diagonal with an efficient LED
backlight array. Compared to the grayscale versions, the new color
TFT display is a bit harder to see with the backlight off, but
with the new high-capacity battery, who cares? Just set the backlight
to stay on for longer and enjoy your new color screen. I set mine
for 20 seconds and have no complaints. The dock connector is set
slightly lower on the casing than previous models, so docking
speaker systems like the Altec Lansing InMotion line will not
fit right. I suspect these companies will come out with adaptors
very soon, though none were announced as of this writing in early
November.
The famous clickwheel interface remains identical to the 4G units
in every respect. Having used every version of iPod to an almost
unhealthy degree, I can tell you the latest rev beats the pants
off all previous designs. It must be felt to be appreciated, and
it is elegant looking, with a shape echoing that of a loudspeaker
cone. To try one is to want one, as many tens of thousands of
3G model owners will tell you. They're all just waiting for the
opportunity to upgrade, even to a model with the same capacity.
It isn't rational, but we've seen how the combination of one's
personal media with one's aesthetic sensibilities combine into
a powerful drive to possess the best.
Processing while you wait
To access your photos on either a Mac or a PC, you need to install
the latest version of iTunes either from the disk that comes with
the device or from Apple's site. When you first connect your new
iPod Photo to your Mac, iTunes 4.7 copies your music library as
usual. About halfway through, iTunes begins a second process that
located your photo collection, then mass converts them into thumbnail
versions suitable for display on the iPod Photo and on television
monitors. Each image occupies roughly 775K on the iPod, which
are then shown on the 2-inch iPod display as well as any standard
(4:3) or widescreen (16:9) television set. On a Mac, iTunes automatically
finds your iPhoto library and goes to work, replicating your albums
exactly into the Apple thumbnail format. On a PC, it will find
albums in either Adobe Elements 3.0 or Adobe Photoshop Album 2.0
format, as well as offering to convert the contents of your common
My Pictures folder. You can also manually select other photo collections
on your drive if you keep them elsewhere, and they will be converted.
I
was surprised to find that my converted thumbnail library and
database file added up to just under 5.5 gigabytes on the iPod
Photo. That's a total space savings of only a little over 1.5
gigabytes compared to the full-resolution versions. I was confused
as to why it would have compressed so little until I realized
that many of my photos were from early, low-res digicams from
1998-2000 when my daughter was born. Of course, I took a thousand
pictures of her early years when the best cameras of the day were
in the 1-2 megapixel range. These smallish shots were not downsampled
to the iPod Photo format, so they take up the same space as they
do on my PowerBook.
According to Apple, here's how it works: iTunes creates four images
from each file in your photo library: a full screen iPod Photo
image of 220x176 pixels; a tiny thumbnail for navigation in the
5x5 display; a larger thumbnail for TV-out navigation on the iPod
during slideshows; and a big 720x480 TV-out image. All these add
up to about 775K for each file in your library. Low-res original
image in your library are rendered as-is without resampling, with
letterbox or pillarbox, depending on the aspect ratio of the original
photo.
Shutterbugs in a huff
One iPod Photo feature has some photography nuts in a huff. There
is an option to copy your photo library at full resolution to
a separate High Resolution folder on the iPod Photo. This takes
a while; my 7.15-gigabyte library of roughly 4000 photos took
almost 24 minutes to replicate across FireWire to the iPod Photo
from my 1.25GHz PowerBook G4. Once there, they cannot be viewed
directly, only copied to another disk or computer. A similar function
is offered if you have a Belkin media reader, which allows you
to pop in your flash media from your camera to copy images to
your iPod for later syncing back to your computer. Some folks
complain that they cannot use the iPod Photo as a viewer in the
field, but this doesn't make any sense to me. Virtually all digital
cameras have an LCD display built-in, so if you simply must see
you photos right now, just look at them on your camera. My two
cameras, a big Leica Digilux 2 and a tiny Casio Z40, have bright,
daylight-readable, high-res displays of 2.5 and 2 inches, respectively.
Either camera can output slideshows to a TV as well, though the
Casio needs its little docking station to do so. These complaints
are rendered even more pointless when you realize that the high-res
photos become available for iPod and TV viewing after the next
time you sync with iTunes.
These same people are yowling about the lack of a card slot in
the iPod Photo, as though Apple would have ever considered poking
an ugly hole in the elegantly simple iPod. With the inexpensive
Belkin accessory available, why the long face, guys?
Don't think the new iPod Photo is without some disappointments.
One feature I'd like is to be able to play all my photos randomly
while listening to music in Shuffle mode, but unless you've set
up a slideshow, creating a giant photo album and a massive playlist
, you can't do it.
Another drawback is the resolution of the 2-inch display. It has
about half the pixels of a decent digicam's screen, so fine details
are generally lost when viewing this way. A higher density part
is very high on my wish list for the next iteration of the iPod
Photo.
One thing the iPod Photo can do is serve as a miniature presentation
auto-player. Load up your "slides," then record a musical and/or
spoken "soundtrack" playlist for them that is timed to the number
of seconds each image is onscreen, make a slideshow of it and
press Play. At this point, there does not appear to be a way to
interactively control both slides and music in sync, so live presentations
are not practical at this point. Again, I suspect this functionality
is in the works for a future update.
Another minor disappointment is the lack of iTunes' ultra-cool
rotating photo cube effect in iPod Photo slideshows. There is
a simple wipe effect that can be turned on or off, and that's
it. This is clearly a place where future firmware updates could
make a lot of users happy.
In the blink of an eye
Apple's designers clearly spent some long nights conjuring up
ways for the iPod Photo to browse through photos quickly. The
clickwheel is as good at image browsing as it is for music files.
Buzzing though the 25-per screen thumbnails happens in the blink
of an eye. Amazingly, zooming through full-size thumbnails is
almost as fast. Though the images scream by, the display keeps
up with the details and the clickwheel's responsiveness makes
it easy to grab the shot you want to see. It's very intuitive
and great fun - anyone can figure it out in seconds.
Apple gets plenty of praise for its user interface prowess, but
when I think about all the ways the iPod UI could have been awful,
I feel like they don't get praise enough for their brilliant work.
Simplicity isn't simple. When things work effortlessly, they seem
so obvious that it's easy to assume that it was a snap to design
and implement. The more you learn about product design, the more
you come to realize that nothing could be further from the truth.
No video for you!
Many pundits, myself included, assumed Apple would release an
iPod that would serve as a video player. They will someday, but
not today. There is nothing in the iPod Photo architecture that
would hinder video playback: screen refresh is obviously up to
the task, and the storage is plenty for screen and TV resolution
video clips. The hardware and software capabilities are not the
issue, it's the lack of content.
I
use an Archos AV420 personal media player, ripping copies of DVDs
we own as well as recorded TV shows for my daughter to view on
long trips. Getting the content into the right format and onto
the device is quite a geeky ride through codecs and converters,
some of which have dubious legality hovering around them. To their
credit, Archos makes the best of a bad situation and steps you
through the tedium, but it's far, far too complex and time consuming
for mass appeal. Forget about whether or not your mom could do
it - even a brainiac like you may not be able to figure it out.
Even if you can, you'll likely forget all the many steps unless
you do it regularly. It's a complete mess that will only be made
better when somebody offers video content as smoothly and as cheaply
as iTunes Music Store does audio content. There is a decent Windows
Media-only site, cinemanow.com, that is a move in the right direction,
but it offers mostly second-rate movies and charges a hefty price
for the privilege. What may save them is their extensive porn
content, but even Windows Media Player fans will scratch their
heads and wonder where the current hit movies are.
Consider, for a moment, Apple's connection to the movie industry
via Steve Jobs' Pixar company. If anyone can talk Hollywood into
embracing downloadable video content, Steve Jobs can - iMovie
Store, anyone?
There's one other little problem hindering video on iPods, and
I mean little. Apple contends, and I heartily agree, that watching
even a half-hour TV show on a 2-inch display it unworkably painful.
Based on my experience with the Archos device as well as several
Microsoft Personal Media Center-based devices from Creative and
Samsung, I'd say the minimum acceptable size is four inches diagonal
in 4:3 or six inches in 16:9 widescreen format.
It is a little known fact that the reason iPods can be turned
up louder than most other digital audio players is that Steve
Jobs is a little hard of hearing. He told his people to make it
LOUD and they did. With the standard issue Apple earbuds, you
can't really hurt yourself too badly since they are inefficient
and leak all over the place. With a good pair of aftermarket in-ears,
any iPod can blow the back of your head off. Likewise, with Jobs
pushing 50, you can expect that when the fabled MoviPod ships
it will have a display size that middle-aged eyes will find immersive.
You can also bet that it'll be a widescreen design, like two out
of three PowerBooks and Apple's complete line of flat panel computer
displays.
Interface improvements
Aside from the new iPod Photo's premium price, here is really
only one bad thing about it: hold your "old" grayscale iPod next
to a color model and your sleek little status symbol suddenly
looks fairly boring. To make matters worse, the iPod Photo adds
some very desirable enhancements you won't want to live without.
Apple
didn't just colorize the iPod interface like some cheesy old black
and white movie, they redesigned it with new fonts that take advantage
of the resolution, color-keyed fields in your contacts screens,
and made Solitaire actually playable without squinting and if
that's a club or a heart. The whole experience is compelling eye
candy where before it was merely utilitarian. Best feature is
the automatic inclusion of album cover art in every iTunes Music
Store downloaded song which displays as the song plays. You can
select it with the center button and it enlarges to full screen,
then click again and it goes back to a thumbnail next to the song
info. What about all those songs you encoded from your CD library,
or even recorded yourself? Select a single song or an album's
worth, select Get Info iTunes' File menu, and you'll see an empty
square window into which you can drag and drop a graphic file
you've created or grabbed from the artist's website. From then
on it will show up on your iPod Photo whenever those songs play.
Very cool.
Another slick enhancement that's currently exclusive to the iPod
Photo is scrolling banner display of any text that is wider than
the iPod's display will accommodate. Classical music buffs in
particular will appreciate this nicety, as those files tend to
have names like Symphony No. 9 - 1: Allegro ma non troppo, un
poco maestoso. This feature functions not just in the Now Playing
screen but throughout the user interface. Here's hoping Apple
adds this to the next iPod firmware update for all models.
Hooking up
Viewing
your photos on the little screen while listening to your music
through earbuds is both fun and satisfying, but the real action
happens when you jack into the home theater system in your living
room. Apple provides a special 4.5-foot white cable in the box
that plugs into the headphone jack that splits out into stereo
audio and composite video, all terminating in the prettiest RCA
plugs you've ever seen. I plugged the iPod into my Sony monitor,
clicked the option for TV output on, and it came right up. Better
results can be obtained using the S-Video jack on the iPod Photo's
special dock. The dock also sports the special 3.5mm jack that
is on the iPod itself, so you can use the composite cable instead
and get the added benefit of true line-out audio instead of 32
ohm headphone-quality output. With line-out, the volume is fixed
at the level stereo components expect, so the clickwheel no longer
controls your volume; you need to tweak it at your stereo's power
amplifier or preamp stage.
So how does iPod Photo output look and sound on a good system?
Fabulous, of course. Would you have expected anything less from
Apple's media-obsessive design team? It even formats itself appropriately
for 16:9 widescreens. The only real downside to this hook up is
that you must carry the special Apple cable or dock to put on
a show in other people's living rooms. If you plan on doing this
often, consider buying an additional cable and toss it into your
bag - grab an extra AC adapter and FireWire-to-dock connector
cable, too.
Pod people
Apple's latest iPod points to a future digital media device that
will be associated with far more than digital music. Think about
all the physical things that can be easily digitized today, then
mentally amass all the documents in your user folder on your computer.
Toss in every file you have in backups, as well as some unanticipated
new variety of digital stream that we may soon wonder how we ever
lived without. (Wireless TiVo-style capture of all your favorite
shows direct from nearby wireless networks? Personal medical history
with X-rays and full-body MRI image set? Interactive satellite
mood-savvy radio? Continuously updated eBay satisfaction score
for you and everyone you know? Brainstorm-like recorded personal
memory clips?) All this may soon ride in your iPod, which will
become a new kind of handheld computer oriented not merely around
your calendar, contact list, and messaging database, but around
the personal digital documents and other bitstreams we purchase,
rent, borrow, and generate every day in this brave new digital
world.
And lucky for Apple, they won't even have to rename it. -David
MacNeill
www.apple.com/ipod
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