[Reviews] TouchCopy 09

[Reviews] TouchCopy 09: "

Overview

TouchCopy is a neat lightweight app that runs on PC & Mac which allows you to transfer content from your iPod or iOS device to your computer. It will copy and view video or photos taken by your with you iPhone. It essentially allows you to copy and access any content on your iPod or iOS device such as SMS, Calendars, Contacts, voice memos, and more. In addition to copying your content to your PC or Mac you can also use your iOS device as an external hard drive.

Installation and Setup

Installation is straight forward following the wizard and accepting the defaults. You get to check out TouchCopy for 15 days, then after that you’ll need to purchase a license.

We went ahead and included our license right away.

That is all there is to it. You can now start using TouchCopy.

Features and Use

When we launched TouchCopy it began looking for our iOS device right away.

When we plugged in our iPod Touch running iOS 4.1, it recognized it right away and the UI launched. We could immediately access our music, videos, podcasts, and our iTunes U content. It also recognized the music metadata and cover art. The user interface is intuitive and if you’re used to iTunes, you’ll have no problem navigating and accessing its features.

It’s laid out like you’d expect a music player to be. You can play your music from the player, create playlists, and more.

The controls at the top of the toolbar are easy to use and pretty self-explanatory. The first thing we decided to do was copy all the content from the iPod to our PC.

We didn’t have much content when first trying out the transfer…about 3GB…but it transferred virtually instantly.

TouchCopy will backup your device content too…so you won’t need to use iTunes…which is always good. The less you have to use bloated ugly iTunes the better. This allows you to easily backup content to your internal or external hard drive.

Next we took a look at transferring content not in iTunes to the library.

We received a message that we needed to change the settings in iTunes…

Just make sure you go into Preferences and the Advanced tab and check Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library and click OK.

After that we were able to copy everything over easily. This makes it easy to transfer your collections around between computers.

Use iOS device as an external Drive

One of the other neat features in TouchCopy is the ability to use your iPod Touch, iPhone, or iPod as an external drive. Just access Files from the toolbar and create a new folder.

We created a new folder for our Office files and they transferred over without a hitch.

You can’t open them directly from TouchCopy, but you can copy them to your computer.

You can copy individual folders from your Apple device to your computer as well.

Access Other Content

You can also access your contacts, calendars, Notes, and photos from your iOS device.

With the Calendars you can actually add appointments to it from TouchCopy.

TouchCopy on OS X

It’s also available for Mac OS X and works relatively the same. Here we take a look at a couple of shot of it on OS X Snow Leopard.

Conclusion

Overall the performance of TouchCopy was fast and the UI is intuitive and easy to use. One of the cooler features is the ability to use your iOS device as an external hard drive without any hacking or jailbreaking. They offer good customer support through their website where you can submit a ticket easily. We got a response back within 24 hours after submitting it.

The amount of features is pretty good, however, there are a few caveats. One is you can’t sync your music from your PC to your Apple device. You have to have your iPod plugged in before you can play any music or video with it, so you will need to copy the content to iTunes for that. TouchCopy isn’t an alternative to iTunes, but is a supplement that gives you more features that iTunes doesn’t offer.

If you’re looking for an easy to use lightweight utility to transfer your Apple device content to your Mac or PC you might want to give TouchCopy a try. They offer a free limited 15 day trial, then is $24.99 after that for a license.

Download TouchCopy for Mac or PC