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Flipping on the iPod Photo and seeing the exuberant, 2" color LCD was quite the awakening. If only the gadget came with a raspy, bespectacled, little person welcoming us to Munchkin Land, the experience would have been a true epiphany. But all the 65,000 colors (we counted) aren't simply for making an impression; they're for proudly displaying your digital photo collection synced from your Mac.
Upon connecting the iPod Photo, iTunes 4.7 (included on a disc) launches and opens preferences, where you can load your entire iPhoto library, specific albums only or your entire Pictures folder. The iPod will load thumbnail images optimized for viewing on its LCD, but you can also choose to load full-resolution copies of the photos as well, accessible when the iPod Photo is enabled for hard disk use. You can also load any album art that is available, such as for songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store. The iPod Photo displays album art as a small thumbnail when the song plays. Press the middle button to view a larger album image for a few seconds.
With pictures loaded, you can view them as an entire collection or by individual album. The iPod Photo first loads thumbnails (up to 25 on the screen at once) that you can scroll through with incredible speed using the Click Wheel. Press play on any photo to begin a slideshow from that point or view a photo singly by selecting it with the middle button. The screen exhibits amazing color accuracy and a surprising amount of detail for its small size. Slideshow options include length per slide, shuffle and repeat. You can choose a music playlist to accompany the slideshow, but unfortunately, you cannot assign specific playlists to specific albums.
Finally, you can output the iPod Photo's video and audio to a TV with the included minijack-to-composite A/V (red, white and yellow RCA) cable. For better picture quality, the included docking cradle has an S-Video output (cable not included). Either way, you receive a nice, crisp picture to the tube with no flicker in the images.
The iPod Photo retains all the vital music features that have made its predecessors essential. It's just a little thicker and two ounces heavier than the 40GB Click Wheel iPod. A benefit to the noticeably larger size is longer battery life. We played more than 14 hours of music with the backlight off, and more than four hours of slideshows with the backlight on (close to the 15/5 hours advertised for the battery).
We like the sound of the iPod Photo's bells and whistles, but is the picture capability really worth the extra $100 over the 40GB iPod? (A 60GB iPod Photo is also available for $600.) For us, that's a maybe. The problem is, the iPod Photo doesn't provide the same management over photos as it does for music. Most glaringly, you can't load photos from more than one Mac (although you can load music from more than one Mac). If you attach the iPod Photo to a second Mac, you have the option of overwriting your other pictures with the new set, or not loading the new ones at all. This hardly seems fair to loyal Apple customers, many of whom own multiple Macs (especially because it's not a copyright issue). Secondly, you cannot create custom slideshows with photos in the order that you want them like you can with the On-the-Go music playlists. A less serious omission, it still seems illogical to us. We hope Apple adds these features in a software update.
Like most genius inventions, no one really knew they wanted a massive hard drive music player until Apple invented the iPod. We're not so sure they'll have the same success in creating a demand for the iPod Photo. Still, a niche of digital photo lovers will be thrilled to carry all their music and photo albums in their pocket. For now, however, we see this as an early adopter gadget with room for improvement.
-MARKKUS ROVITO
iPOD PHOTO 40GB: 
Apple | www.apple.com/ipodphoto | 800-692-7753 | $500
Pros: Brilliant color screen, TV outputs, long battery life, same great musicplaying functions.
Cons: Can only sync photos from one Mac at a time, can't create custom slideshows, expensive.
Requires: OS 10.2.6, G3 400mhz or faster, iTunes 4.7
macHOME recommends: iPhoto 4.0.3 to transfer iPhoto albums, 256MB or more RAM
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