Orange “Other” Bar on iPod

If you use an iPod with your Apple Mac laptops then you know what I am talking about.

That pesky orange “other” bar that shows up when you sync. Still don’t know what I mean?

When you sync your iPod with your computer a bar shows up at the bottom of your iTunes window that tells you how much available space you have on your device. This bar is multi colored. Music takes up some space, movies takes some more, applications is yet another chunk (if you use the iPod Touch), photos have their own color, and then that mysterious “other” piece that is colored orange.

What is this other? I really have no clue. And it was never an issue or problem for me because it didn’t take up much space.

That is - until I really started working with my iPhoto library. Of course these kinds of things are never apparent right away.

I had had a busy week on my Mac, updating to newer versions of iTunes and whatever else. I also started reading iPhoto ‘08: The Missing Manual. Yes, I know that iPhoto is pretty simple to use but I felt like it had more potential than what I was taking advantage of. This book has given me many shortcuts and “Aha” moments - the kind when you say “Wow! I didn’t know the program could do that!”.

So, I started creating new events in iPhoto, splitting up old ones, and rearranging the pictures in my entire library which is about 7,000 photos strong.

At some point after this busy week, I synced up my 16GB iPod Touch - and my orange other bar occupied about 3GB of space.

Now I hate these kind of scratch your head moments. I never really noticed the orange bar before. Did it always take up this much space? No, it couldn’t have - I would have noticed it then, wouldn’t I have? Hmmm. Did the software cause the problem? Is there a problem? Maybe a new app, calendar or contact data? What could it be?

On top of that, the iPod Touch seemed a bit sluggish. Nothing I could put my finger on though. The programs seemed a little slow to launch. How do I call customer service on that one? What do I ask?

Up until this point, I had always synced up my entire iPhoto library onto my iPod Touch using Apple Mac laptops. But everything was split up by album. Before I noticed the large other portion I switched to syncing photos by event. Now that I had added all of these events maybe the organization structure of the events was taking up space.

So, I removed all of my photos from my iPod Touch. And what do you know - most of the orange “other” disappeared. Poof!

Now I know that in my case the other was related to iPhoto.

I have not added pictures back onto my device yet. While it was nice to have the whole library at my fingertips - I rarely used it. Once I finish working with my iPhoto library, I will sync up only the events that I need - maybe the most current ones, and see if that doesn’t solve the other problem.

I will let you know what I find out. Does anyone else out there have a problematic other bar and a solution as well?

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