Are you missing the Disk mode on your iPhone or iPod Touch? Ecamm Network has released version 1.2 of their iPhoneDrive software for iPhone or iPod Touch OS v1.1.1 so that you can use unused storage on your iPhone or iPod Touch for file storage like a thumb drive to backup data or transfer between Macs using a familiar Mac OS X interface.
Ecamm Network, a two-person Massachusetts software company, has released v1.2 of iPhoneDrive, an application that turns the Apple iPhone or for that matter even iPhone Touch into a storage device for people who want to take files from their Mac on the road. Ecamm are the same folks who have brought us such Mac classics as iGlasses and iChatUSBCam.
When the iPhoneDrive was first launched, it helped you transfers files to and from an iPhone using a neat finder-like interface which Mac users are familiar to. "That's pretty much it," Glen Aspeslagh had said back then, who founded ECamm with his twin brother Ken in 2002, "It's a very simple niche product that fills a missing feature." He then went on to add "The iPhone doesn't have that functionality, so we thought we'd try to write a program to add the feature".
Apple seems to have deliberately omitted the Disk mode from the iPhone to avoid people having access to iPhone's OS X files with the intention I guess to avoid hacking. However, it is a nice feature to have your phone or MP3 player also double up as a thumb drive which is exactly what iPhoneDrive helps you achieve enabling you to use your iPhone's or iPod Touch's unused storage space as a disk drive to say backup data or transfer between Macs.
In addition, with the iTunes and iPhoto integration introduced in v1.2, iPhoneDrive also provides easy access to your iPhone's iTunes and iPhoto media. You can now simply drag music and videos from the iPhone to your desktop, or send them directly to iTunes. This feature thus allows you to, for instance, sync music from one Mac to an iPhone using iTunes, then extract the same music to another Mac.
With v1.2, you are no longer limited to create just a single folder, you can now also create custom folders. They have also introduced the advanced settings feature which allows you to switch from seeing just the "safe" files rather than seeing every available file, including the manifests and lock sync files that are created by iTunes during synchronization thus adding a level of safety.
Thanks to iPhoneDrive's Mac OS X interface as you can seen in the screenshots below it makes it quite simple to transfer files between your Mac and your iPhone. However, do note that iPhoneDrive does not provide you an interface for you to have access to your files from your iPhone, its only for access from your Mac.
Ecamm have also clarified on their website that iPhoneDrive achieves all this without changing or hacking the iPhone that could void iPhone's warranty and stores your files in the media section of the iPhone's disk.
iPhoneDrive works with all iPhone firmware so far including v1.1.1. Unfortunately, as you would have noticed it currently only works on Mac. You can check out iPhoneDrive for a 7-days trial period, after which it will cost you $9.95, which is quite reasonable for the utility it provides. The point to note here is that you can install iPhoneDrive on all of your Macs without the need to purchase multiple licenses.
Click here to visit Ecamm's website to check out iPhoneDrive and don't forget to share your feedback on the iPhone Application in the comments for the benefit of other readers.
You might be interested in checking out articles in the following top Categories:
Pretty cool program! (but) am used to cyber duck.
Great if you bring your iphone to the office and don't have wifi. If you want to view pdfs you have to transfer them to the Var/Root/Media/PDF folder from the mobile finder app even if the PDF or doc is in the iphone drive folder if you want to view it when on the run you have to move it…hummmm
All in all worth the trip.
Any Iphone Drive for WINDOWS
Just get the MobileFinder app for your iPhone and use it with iPhoneDisk.dmg on the mac, this iPhoneDrive is really meaningless, i just tried the demo and deleted it in a flash.
Nice little Mac program.
If your on a PC, this program, TouchCopy, does the same thing. Lets you copy files and folders to and from your iPhone / iPod Touch from your PC.
http://www.touchcopy.com
or
http://www.wideanglesoftware.com/touchcopy/