General Apple iPod Photo 30GB and 60GB Description Notes and Review

This ipod has been replaced by this new ipod video 30gb and 80GB new ipod video in black or white.

Wow. It's like an iPod, but with a colour screen!

Yes, the most popular and (formerly) expensive version of the basic MP3 Player around now has a photo version. We have only started listing the apple iPod Photo range after their recent (Q1 05) price reduction to a reasonable level. Before the price reduction Apple customers were getting a bit of a raw deal. Not any more.

*Carry an entire library of music — up to 15,000 songs and full-colour album cover art — or as many as 25,000 photos in your pocket.

Apple iPod Photo 30GB Info

Larger Capacity Photos and album art as well as music

Usual suspects:

*Marketing inaccuracies abound, as with plenty of manufacturers and models. "Up to 15,000 songs and cover art ...."

The maths is simple and doesn't take long. 1 minute of music encoded at 128Kbps in AAC (the format is irrelevant, it's the 128Kbps bit that matters) equals approximately 1MB. 1 min= 1MB

15,000 x 4 minute songs (Apple's figures) = 60,000 mins => 60,000MB approx.

There is your 60GB full before you can add the cover art. You can have 15,000 4 minute songs (if you buy the 60GB version), but not the cover art too, despite Apple's claim. Maths don't lie.

More loose language:

"Then upload photos from iPhoto on your Mac, Adobe Photoshop Elements or Adobe Album on a Windows PC or directly from your digital camera using the optional iPod Camera Connector "

Currently (April 05) there is only one Jukebox range that has the capability to connect and transfer directly from your digital camera and the is the iRiver H300 series. The iPod camera connector (which must be purchased separately!) allows you to take memory cards from you camera, put them in to the connector and then once you have connected that to the iPod you can copy off the digital pictures. That's not a direct connection and you have to keep swapping the memory cards.

Any more gripes?

Apple make a big thing out of the colour screen. 65,000 colours may seem immense, but it doesn't really compare that favourably to some other colour displays' figures. However, the screen is of a good quality and the display is superior to some older model colour screens.

Whinging aside, this is an accomplished player. On many levels.

"Picture Your Music" is one of the taglines for the player. That might seem a little trite in its aspect, but, like some other photo-oriented models the iPod photo is capable of running a slide show, either on a normal TV screen, or via a projector. Disappointingly, however, unlike the other photo jukeboxes where the cables necessary to do this come as standard, the cables are not included for the iPod photo. They must be purchased separately for an additional £15 or so. The slide show can be accompanied by music form the iPod photo's playlists.

The on-screen browser/ interface is useful - a strong plus. The colour screen, as always, improves the nature of your GUI experience. The same click wheel as the original iPod means that the navigation is frequently completely intuitive for the new elements, menus and whatnot involved in dealing with digital pictures. It's the example that everyone uses about the iPod photo, but when you're using the scroll wheel to browse through all your pics, having 25 thumbnails to a screen when searching trying to find the one you want is a big help and then you realise that you have selected the one you were looking for and made it large, without even thinking, you realise that some human/ machine boundary has been crossed.

In truth several of the modern colour photo capable jukeboxes browser systems feel like that when you use them, but lets not detract from a good thing. Using the iPod photo is nice.

The software that drives all iPods is iTunes. That's right, the same one that you can use to pay for music downloads for your iPod The same downloads that cost (APR 05) $0.99 in the USA (or about 52p) and €0.99 on the continent (about 68p), but for some reason cost 79p for people living in the UK, almost 50% more than America and 16% more than the rest of Europe. Apple really are looking to milk you for every penny, and according to their P&L accounts they have enjoyed some notable success over the last few years.

iTunes allows you to transfer your graphics onto the iPod photo from a folder on the hard drive of your computer. You can also auto-sync to fill out the album art for the music you already have on. By which we mean it can do it for you automagically - now that is a thing to behold. In truth its not particularly hard to do and several other players do it too, but its still impressive when it happens.

Extra features

Clock, calendar, timer, alarm, text prompts and reminders, note making, all kinds of small extras that are so handy - nice touches. Its no wonder people like their iPods so. There are games that you can play too, which always impresses us disproportionately.

Battery News

Time has improved battery life over the years. Its a shame that older models of iPod didn't have replaceable batteries, otherwise they too would be able to take advantage of the new batteries' 15 hour span (for music playback, 5 hours for music & slide show). Not to worry though, as we will be saying the same thing in the future as the iPod photo battery is not replaceable either.

Charging can be done via the USB or FireWire cable of your computer, so you can charge up while transferring music, or whilst docked. You can also do a quick charge that gets the battery back up to about 80% in super quick time.

Conclusions

You can still pay less and get more for your money, but the iPod Photo is an accomplished player with good features. If you are looking for value then you have plenty of comparable models with similar features (several that also incorporate video, and some that are still smaller thinner and lighter than the iPod, albeit for 20GB instead of 30GB). But, if you are looking for an iPod photo - and everything that iPod Photo means - then these two are the one and only.

Apple iPod Photo 30 GB | Apple iPod Photo 60 GB