The iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad
devices from Apple all come with limited amounts of hard drive space. Depending
on how much money you spent when you initially purchased the device, you’ve got
somewhere between 8 gigabytes and 64 gigabytes of room to play with. This may
seem like a lot, but when you consider that new desktop and laptop computers
typically ship with 500 gigabytes of storage or more you realize just how
quickly this space can fill up. Luckily, there are always a few tricks you can
employ to free up hard drive space without just upgrading to a bigger (and more
expensive) model of your device.
Use an Internet connection to
stream videos and songs instead of downloading them. While it is tempting to
take all of your favorite movies and songs with you on the go, you don’t
necessarily need to if you’re in range of an Internet connection or have a data
plan. Applications like Netflix for movies, Hulu Plus for television shows and
Spotify for music allow you to access this content solely using your Internet
connection without downloading anything to the device. Note that these services
do require subscriptions, and some of them charge a monthly fee.
Rent movies from iTunes instead
of purchasing them. Purchasing a movie or television show downloads the content
directly to your device (or to your computer) permanently. Renting a movie or
TV show episode only downloads the content until you view it, at which point it
is deleted. Renting is also cheaper, and will save you more than just space in
the long run if you’re the type of person who likes movies but will only ever
watch them once.
Only sync the content you want
when you want it. While it is certainly tempting to take hundreds or thousands
of songs with you everywhere you go, it isn’t really needed if you’re not
planning on listening to those songs on a regular basis. The same thing goes
with movies – it doesn’t make any sense to sync your entire movie collection if
you only watch a particular film once every few months. Leave that content on
your computer and only sync the things you plan on watching or listening to in
the immediate future.
Manage the photos you take and
the videos you capture. While photos don’t necessarily take up a lot of space,
the high definition videos that the iPod Touch, iPad and iPhone are capable of
recording do. While it’s great to walk through our daily lives with a camera
always at the ready, this content can quickly take up a lot of space that is
best used for other things.
Go through the “Newsstand”
application and remove past issues of newspapers and magazines. Certain
applications (like the “Entertainment Weekly” reader) download full issues to
your device so that you can read them. However, those issues stay on your
device even after you’re done. Certain issues can take up 100 megabytes of
space or more. Deleting these old issues once you’re done will free up a
significant amount of space to be better used by other types of content.
No comments:
Post a Comment