One of the least publicized and most important features announced with the new iPod Photo yesterday was the addition of Image Capture support allowing you to upload photos from a digital camera to the iPod – with an option US$30 dongle. Read More…
One of the least publicized and most important features announced with the new iPod Photo yesterday was the addition of Image Capture support allowing you to upload photos from a digital camera to the iPod – with an option US$30 dongle.
One of my major gripes with the iPod Photo 60GB (besides paying US$600 for it!) was that Apple didn’t provide a way to upload photos from a digital camera directly to the iPod. This seemed like an obvious feature for the new color iPod and many were shocked at its omission from the final feature list. When traveling for extended periods of time digital shutter bugs are forced to tote a notebook computer to occasionally offload pictures from the camera. The problem is that many people don’t want to bring their computer with them on vacation (blasphemers!) forcing them to bring extra memory cards, or worse, buy them at fantastically higher prices at a resort gift shop.
Apple righted their wrong yesterday with barely a peep about the new feature other than a tiny mention on the iPod Photo product page that appears at the bottom of a tiny side bar titles iPod photo (sic) Software Downloads:
Upload photos directly from your camera using the optional iPod Camera Connector accessory, also arriving in March
iPodlounge’s Jeremy Horwitz notes that iPod Photo Import has been in the 3G iPod since around October 2003, when Belkin released its first photo download product, the Media Reader for iPod. The Photo Import feature remained hidden in the iPod?s menu system unless you plugged a Media Reader in, or used settings to activate it as a menu choice.
So where is this “iPod Camera Connector accessory” anyway? And why isn’t Apple singing it from the rooftops? It won’t be available until sometime in March and no other information has been posted. Hmmm…
All we can hope is that the iPod Camera Connector accessory (ICC) isn’t and bigger than the iPod itself like the Belkin Digital Camera Link.
Further Reading:
The Day in iPod: Photo Storage for More Than Just iPod Photo? (Gizmodo)
iPod Firmware Download (Apple)
Apple Updates iPod (Slashdot)
