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(More customer reviews)With Apple releasing iPhoto '09 with support for geotagged photography I immediately wanted to utilize this new feature set. I do a lot outdoors: Geocaching, Boy Scouts, hiking, bicycling, so I saw a great way to track my "expeditions" through my photography.
I found this GPS Data Logger and it advertises heavily that it is MAC OSX compliant. I looked at the reviews for this device on Amazon and various other websites. Most of the negative comments didn't alarm me as they were for the most part due to a misunderstanding of what the device does or they didn't like a feature set.
What I have learned is this:
1. GPS Photo Tracker software - This software comes in the box from AMOD and embeds the GPS locations into the digital photograph JPEGs. This is written only for Microsoft Windows and does exist for Macintosh OSX. In fact if you have Vista 64 don't bother installing the software that comes with the device; it will crash. This is a known bug and AMOD has a fixed version on their website.
2. The GPS device looks like a thumb drive to any computer and the GPS tracks are stored in ASCII. This allows any computer to look at the data, there are no proprietary formats or synchronization drivers. This is what they call "Driverless" and is a in my opinion a very good decision.
3. Upgrades to the firmware must be run from Windows computers. If you don't happen to own a Windows computer, you're out of luck. This is not a very good decision when calling your product MAC compatible.
You might be asking; "So, if the photo-linking software supplied by AMOD does not exist for MAC computers and firmware upgrades only exist for Windows computers, how can they say it is compatible with MAC"?
The device itself is compatible with MACs because it looks like a thumb drive and has a third party software package that comes in the package to link the GPS tacks to photos. More on the third party software later.
I think that the firmware upgrades should be written for all operating systems that it is deemed compatible. For example to be called Macintosh compatible, firmware upgrades should run from a Macintosh computer. Garmin now supports MACs and did not claim to be MAC compatible until they had the support software for Macintosh computers.
To allow Macintosh users to link GPS locations to JPEGs, the AMOD is shipped with a JetPhoto Studio. Out of the box you can use this software to attribute the photographs with the GPS track locations. However I say attribute because the GPS location is not embedded into the JPEG. The location is kept in the JetPhoto photo album and assigned to the photo. What this means is that if you link the GPS location to the photograph in JetPhoto Studio and then send the photo to a friend the GPS location does not go with the photograph, it remains only in the JetPhoto album.
To actually embed the GPS location into the JPEG you must purchase JetPhoto Studio Pro for an additional $25. I was not happy about this, but I saw other features I liked in the Pro version that I like and purchased JetPhoto Studio Pro. I tested embedding the GPS location into my JPEGs and it works fine. But now I must run my photos through JetPhoto and then import them into iPhoto which takes extra time.
The only other thing that I think important is that when I first tried the device it worked, then I did a "Clean Disk" operation and that was the last time it worked. I tried installing the latest firmware, removed the batteries, etc. nothing worked. I made a quick call to Semsons (who sold me the product through Amazon) and they determined it was faulty. They replaced it and the new one has been working fine for the few days I've had it.
In summary; the AMOD AGL3080 will work with a MAC but to get the full features you will need to purchase JetPhoto Studio Pro for an extra $25, or find a shareware program that does GPS photo linking. I gave this 3 stars because firmware upgrades are written only for Windows and MAC users are not fully supported with the software included in the box which forces MAC users to purchase the Pro version of JetPhoto or start searching the web for software.
Click Here to see more reviews about: AGL3080: Amod AGL3080 GPS Data Logger (Windows and Mac Image Software included)
Large data capacity - stores over 256 000 data records: AGL3080 Photo Tracker is a GPS-based data logger designed to provide location information for digital photos. Unlike other similar productsAGL3080 does not need driver to operate. When you plug AGL3080 into a computer via USB portit will simply appears as an external drive. The recorded log is standard NMEA format which is compatible with many online tools such as JetPhotoGPSVisualizeretc.
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