Apple sells two different hardwired dongles (Lightning Camera USB and SD card reader). If you can’t figure out how to use one of the several Wi-Fi transfer solutions (an app and a Wi-Fi network, a Wi-Fi card, or a wireless hub like iUSBPort, Kingston MobileLite Wireless, or SanDisk Connect Multimedia device, etc.) or don’t want to, those hardwired options are always there.
As far as interfacing a tablet with a PC/Mac, just plug the Lightning USB cable (that came with your iDevice) from your iDevice into a USB port on the PC/Mac. Then upload images into whatever application you like (Lightroom, Aperture, etc.). No need for iTunes but that option is still there.
From the matrix (see link below) it appears that a restriction with the Mobi is moving files directly from the Mobi to a PC/Mac.
http://www.eye.fi/products
Just to clarify, you can use the Mobi to get JPEG images from a camera to a tablet/smart phone. After that, getting images from a tablet/smart phone to a PC/Mac can be done several ways (an app or two using HTTP, WebDAV, FTP, Bluetooth, etc., hardwired using your iDevice USB cable, using a wireless hub, or using the web and Dropbox, etc.).
That response was as uninformative and shallow as a marketing glossy and it didn't appear to actually answer any question.
Where to start.
How about with a disclaimer. I am a programmer. I am not a fanboy of any particular OS but most of my experience is with Windows and Android. I believe that computers should serve me and do things the way I want, not the other way around.
I bought an iPad Retina because:
1) My wife had one and I knew I would have to be her tech support, so I better get familiar with it.
2) It had what I considered to be the best screen around at the time.
3) I wanted to try the Apple experience.
4) Photosmith is iPad only.
I wanted to shoot on a short trip, start tagging on the flight home, sync the photos and tags with Lightroom, and not carry a laptop with me. A travel laptop and base desktop with Lightroom is a pain because Adobe can't figure out how to easily sync them.
Photosmith promised to meet my needs but at version 2.x , it sucked. It was not ready for pro, semi pro, or avid amateur use, but you had to be hard core of some kind to use it. You had to be willing to tolerate frequent crashes and restarts and never knowing if your database was quite right. However it was the only game in town to tag photos in a Lightroom compatible way.
A lot of the problems came from the iPad and Apple. From a programmer's point of view, Apple's photo handling should be scraped and restarted from scratch by somebody who actually wants people to use it. It's buggy as hell and worse, it's locked down so unless you want to provide your own photo file handling from scratch, you have to deal with it.
The Photosmith Devs got fed up enough to right their own and released it with 3.0. That's part of why 3.0 took so long to release. It was worth the wait. 3.0 is much more stable and bypasses many of the problems induced by Apple.
Photosmith has always natively supported Eye-Fi. Not having an Eye-Fi, I could never get a workflow that really worked for me. Native Eye-Fi support means PSmith doesn't have to go thru Apple's photo roll or Eye-Fi's app and the numerous problems associated the combination.
I bit the bullet and bought an Eye-Fi Mobi. Based on what I could read from the marketing material (ahem), it seemed to do the things that I needed and the x2 version seemed a little over complicated for me.
At this point I have bought an iPad and an Eye-Fi card to support PSmith. All that to support mobile tagging for Lightroom. How screwed up are my priorities?
I bought the iPad lighting USB dongle expecting to plug any USB thumb drive or USB to SD/CF/etc reader. I captured to CF and SD at the time and I thought one dongle better than 2. Well, the USB dongle is fussy and won't read most thumb drives and adapters. Apple knows what's good for me. I might run with scissors or something. But guess what. I can plug a US$2 USB dumb hub into the dongle and then my CF reader into that and Apple's
fat, dumb, and happy. Not only does it impose unreasonable restrictions, it doesn't even enforce them very well. At lease the SD dongle does seem to work.
Back to the Mobi. It is a dumbed down version for people who can't configure a wireless network. Worthy market. But the Mobi appears to require you to use their app with of course uses the Apple photo roll which screws up a number of things making Psmith/Lightroom tag-syncing a pain.
I love Psmith but until I get my workflow right, It's just a toy. I think once I get the right Eye-Fi card, things will improve a lot. Why not another wireless solution that was mentioned? Because Psmith doesn't natively support it. You have to go through the Apple interface and that makes a difference.
Bart1969, I like Psmith and recommend it but I think you need an Eye-fi to go with it. The workflows without it are not worth the hassles.
Apologies for the rant.
