IPad Photo Order Scrambled (again?)

To Allan Simpson: Yes, that's the explanation -- the one I feared. Professional photographers cheered when iOS5 finally got rid of this horrific date sorting snafu. Now it appears to be back. For example, brides love it when Apple resorts their wedding album pictures for them. This is a real disaster for photo professionals. Once again, the best hardware maker in the world stumbles on its software ineptitude.

To Meneisys: Thanks for the tips -- I'll check them out. However, I have to say that clients want to browse their proofs with the Apple app, probably because their used to it. Other than scrambling the sequence of your photos, I still find it to be a terrific viewer. The sorting fiasco was fixed in iOS5, but incredibly they seem to have brought it back. Unbelievable.

Allan - Re: "Poor Windows sufferers".......While I understand your obvious Mac preference, I think you missed the central point here. This is not a 'natural' weakness of Windows systems. Someone at Apple went to a considerable effort to program this date-based sort sequence feature into either iOS or iTunes (I'm not sure which).

Why would they do that? Who would possibly want the order of their image files changed to a date-based sequence that violates every rule of professional image sequencing. Answer: Teenagers and College students -- the Twitter and Facebook crowd. Sadly, the new Apple has become far more interested in quantity than quality.

This is just another example of support for professionals taking a backseat to mass appeal to the sacred 18-35 year old demographic. Certainly not the way Apple used to think. But, Apple shareholders obviously love this strategy. After all, there's a whole lot more money in the mass appeal products instead of catering to niche-professionals. So, it seems that we Windows-based photographers are going to have to go back to manipulating the dates in our images to get them in the desired sort order. A sad day.

Allan - What professional photographer manually manages photo storage on their computer without using a professional type application like Aperture on a Mac?

Of course I realize that your question is strictly rhetorical. But, for the record, surveys show that Mac usage within the global professional photography community is just a bit higher than in the world at-large. About 7% Mac, 3% Linux, etc., and 90% Windows. As for Aperture, virtually all my Mac colleagues use Lightroom and Photoshop -- just as I do under Windows. I am not personally aware of any professional photographers using Aperture and iPhoto.

And, back to the subject at hand, from a professional photographer's standpoint, the iPad is the greatest display and evaluation device ever conceived. I also do some in-studio client previews on my Apple TV. In my opinion, it's clearly in Apple's best interest to make the iPad work easily and effectively for all users, regardless of their PC preference. The new date resorting "feature" is in my opinion a step backwards.

To Menneisyys - Thanks again so very much for the tip on the Photo Manager Pro app. After installation, it revealed a critically important factor in this whole photos sorting problem. Namely, that the images are assigned completely new file names when they are loaded on to the iPad by iTunes. And, controlling the file naming means controlling the sort sequence. That would suggest that the recent iTunes upgrade may be the actual culprit in this whole photo sorting mess.

I'll be doing a lot of testing today and tomorrow to see if reverting back to iTunes 10.6.1 will undo the problem. I'll post back after some experimentation to see exactly how the shuffling if photos is being accomplished and exactly which software (iTunes, or iOS5) is creating the problem. My sense is that iOS5 is not the culprit. More later.

Culprit found -- it's the iTunes 10.6.3 upgrade. Based on observed behavior, the scrambling (re-sorting) of photo images on Windows-based systems was initiated with the upgrade to iTunes 10.6.3. Moreover, the problem can be undone and eliminated by reverting back to iTunes 10.6.1. It works, I did it.

I do not yet have a clear idea how iTunes could affect the photo sort sequence of so many devices: iPads, iPhones, and Apple TV's. But, somehow it definitely does. It appears that iTunes creates its own version of users' images, and also gives them iTunes generated file names. Control the file names and you control the sort sequence.

Since I have no desire to be stuck on iTunes 10.6.1 for the rest of my life, I will be working hard to find out about the underlying logic. I'm looking for some way to circumvent this photo re-sequencing that doesn't involve plugging phony dates in all my image files – as was required with iOS4. If anyone reading this truly understands the mechanics of how this lunatic date-sorting scheme is being accomplished (and how to get around it), I would sure love to hear from you. Either post here in the forum, or via e-mail to OB9388@aol.com. Thanks in advance for any help.

LV_Bill