It’s funny: when I got the news about the Simplify Photo app I thought I could kill two birds with one stone by simply (as opposed to complicatedly?) installing the Simplify Media program on my Mac. That way I could easily stream all of my music and my photos to my iPhone whenever I wanted to. Then I remembered that I have all of my music on the iPhone anyway, so streaming my tunes would just be a way to kill my battery faster and lower the sound quality. Hmm.
Anyway, about those streamed photos: I’ve been using Simplify Photo with a Mac and my iPhoto library, and I think it would be a great app if it just got over a few organizational problems.
How it works
Simplify Photo does live up to its name: the moment you’ve set up a free Simplify Media account and specified which photo library or folder to share, all you have to do is load up the app on your iPhone and all your photos should be readily streamable.
Simplify Photo is a 1.0 app, and it does feel that way. I used it to stream my whole iPhoto library, and it was able to use all of the tags, comments, events, faces, and places that I have on my MacBook. Faces and Places work well enough, since I don’t have very many of them. However, that’s not really how I like to view or organize my photos. I’ve worked for hours upon hours to organize my images into events and albums, and I’m very used to loading iPhoto up and then navigating from there. Although Simplify Photo can stream these folders perfectly, it presents them alphabetically instead of chronologically.
I’ve got a problem with this for two reasons: 1) Simplify Photo mimics the iPhoto presentation at ground level, but once I try to view an event or album they change things up on me. 2) It’s not easy to navigate to my most recent events (or any events, for that matter) without some sort of alphabetical scroll bar to jump to specific letters. I’m assuming that Simplify will eventually add some sort of alphabetical bar (SDK-willing), but I really do hope that a future update adds the option to view Events in chronological order like in iPhoto.
The only view that is organized chronologically is “Timeline”, which is really just the Photos tab in iPhoto, but divided into months. I like this mode, but I’d still prefer to browse my pictures via events or albums.
The handling of actual photos in Simplify Photo is much better than the handling of the iPhoto hierarchy. My pictures loaded very quickly over 3G and the app can show quite a few thumbnails on-screen without having to buffer. Once you’ve tapped on a photo, it only takes a second or two for the file to stream to your device. From there you can swipe to view other pictures (or use the arrow keys), look at the photo information, start a slideshow, or save the picture to your iPhone. The only thing you can’t do is zoom in on a picture, and that’s likely because the photos have to be heavily compressed to stream so quickly from the computer.
My Conclusion
So who is Simplify Photo for? Well, it’s a great way to show off a few vacation photos when you’re with friends. You won’t enjoy even the mediocre resolution that the synced iTunes photos will provide, but you’re saved the trouble of having to sync anything in the first place. All you need to do is have the Simplify Media running on your computer, and you’ll be able to access all of the specified photos (and music, via the separate app Simplify Music) wherever you have a decent signal.
I think the current sale price of $0.99 is fair for what the Simplify Photo app currently offers, but I do hope that the developers will pay extra attention to how pictures are organized within the app for the next update. There’s a lot of potential for this app, since iPhone users like taking a lot of pictures and Simplify Photo could really, well, simplify things. The app just needs be easier to navigate.
—
At the time of writing, this app was on sale for $0.99 until September 1, 2009. App Store link here. Thanks to Simplify Media for the review promo code.
Continue reading:
- Everything New Apple Just Announced (Septembe
- Apple Watch Pre-Order
- Apple Research Kit launches with 5 Apps
- Apple TV now only $69
TAGS: images, photos, streaming
