iPhoto'11 - a disappointment.

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Level 1

5 points

iPhoto'11 - a disappointment.

hello all!

even though i use iPhoto privately, i have some experience in organizing of and working with a large amount of photos in my job. also i would call myself as a rather advanced computer user.

recently i got this new macbook pro and decided to take th offer of apple to buy iLife '11 as a chaep update to preinstalles iLife '09. that was a mistake.

first of all it is very slow and transforms your whole iPhoto library into an iPhoto '11 library, that is not backward compatible. uff!

if i press control-I the common info shortcut i get useless information about tags, faces and places, that take ages to load. adn take a lot of space of the screen.

if i want to print a picture, that was taken in "wide" mode in the format that it was taken (leaving a white border on top an botton) that is simply not possible. had to copy it to desktop and print from preview. good concept, apple!

and another thing: when i insert my sd card (16GB) that i do not empty everytime for backup reasons - i guess i'm not the only one in the world who does that - iPhoto has to read every single picture of the 2000 something and is not able to skip the pictures that were already imported previously into iphoto before doing this. so a typical procedure is: waiting 10minutes for iPhoto, importing with the option "do not import pictures that were already imported" enabled, inding all the pictures that you deleted imported again - nice!
i came to copying the hand-selected pictures to desktop first an then importing them to iPhoto (also very much in accordance with iPhoto's concept of not having to touch anything internal) as the better of two bad soluions.

so i dont suggest anyone to get iPhoto'11, it is not a bit better/faster/more beatiful that its predecessor and really shook my trust in apple to constantly improve things, what still is definitely true with iTunes, th OS in generall, Preview and all the little things. i will stop using iPhoto as soon as possible!

florian

ps. if its all my mistake/inflexibility/wanting the wrong thing i honestly apologize, but my suspicion is also that apple wants to decrease quality of iPhoto to sell more of Aperture. is this thing better?

MacBook Pro 13" 2.4 GHz MacBookPro7,1, Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Nov 15, 2010 2:16 PM

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Answer 1

LarryHN

Level 10

106,110 points

Nov 15, 2010 2:38 PM in response to Florian573

so i dont suggest anyone to get iPhoto'11, it is not a bit better/faster/more beatiful that its predecessor and really shook my trust in apple to constantly improve things, what still is definitely true with iTunes, th OS in generall, Preview and all the little things. i will stop using iPhoto as soon as possible!

florian

ps. if its all my mistake/inflexibility/wanting the wrong thing i honestly apologize, but my suspicion is also that apple wants to decrease quality of iPhoto to sell more of Aperture. is this thing better?

Or maybe you simply have unreal expectations about a program that costs less than $20 and is designed for casual users to have an extremely powerful photo manager

and it would be good to actually learn how to use the program - it would be a worthwhile investment of time to take the iphoto tutorials - http://www.apple.com/findouthow/photos/ - they are very helpful and will save you a lot of time and frustration.

LN

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Answer 2

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,396 points

Nov 15, 2010 2:51 PM in response to Florian573

first of all it is very slow and transforms your whole iPhoto library into an iPhoto '11 library, that is not backward compatible. uff!

Actually, it is backwards compatible. A new version of software that can open earlier versions work is backwards compatible What you're complaining about is that iPhoto 09 etc aren't forward compatible, I know of no software manufacturer that promises forward compatibility. uff! indeed.

if i press control-I the common info shortcut i get useless information about tags, faces and places, that take ages to load. adn take a lot of space of the screen.

You also get a lot of information from the Exif and IPTC metadata - the Info and Extended Info panes in one.

if i want to print a picture, that was taken in "wide" mode in the format that it was taken (leaving a white border on top an botton) that is simply not possible.

What? You mean like this?

Regards

TD

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Answer 3

Florian573 Author

Level 1

5 points

Nov 15, 2010 3:31 PM in response to Yer_Man

thank you for your replies, i did not want to annoy anyone (but you did not misunderstand me), i just was angry, but my anger is getting less.

i think it is a bit about the "professionality" that i would have liked to feel in iPhoto, something that mac (for me) always used to have. but as times goes by (and mac users are getting more and more, which is good!) mac, and iPhoto becomes more "mainstream". i NEVER would like to use these - well - kitchy background images and predefined layout stuff- but thats obviously a question of taste!
for me the whole mac world used to be "cool" in a sense that somebody knowing about things (design in that case) would suggest good things and leave bad things (like common, cheap, amateur-like propositions) out of the system.
and when i cannot easily find the button to print a wide screen image as a (on left and right side) borderless ⚠ image but immediately get 10 different versions of putting text, flowers, strange effects and whatsoever to a picture and then the one-click posibility to order it from some store for 1,5€, its over for me!

but where do i find the options you show, TD?

thanks for th discussion so far!

flo

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Answer 4

LarryHN

Level 10

106,110 points

Nov 15, 2010 4:24 PM in response to Florian573

select a photo(s) and click share => print and choose a theme - for the fit to frame option click customize on that page and right click on the preview of the print and select "fit to frame"

LN

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Answer 5

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,396 points

Nov 16, 2010 1:13 AM in response to Florian573

i think it is a bit about the "professionality" that i would have liked to feel in iPhoto,

But iPhoto is not an Professional app. It's aimed at the folks with a point and shoot or even a phone camera who want to have easy uploading to Facebook, Flickr and emailing so that they can share their pics quick with their pals and the new baby's grandparents. That's the target audience. And that's most photographers. So, in iPhoto, it's been a while since printing has been warmed over - why, because these folks hardly ever print.

Everything after that - books, cards, slideshows - are designed around fixed templates. This means the user has to make less choices and so can create something that looks well and do it very quickly.

for me the whole mac world used to be "cool" in a sense that somebody knowing about things (design in that case) would suggest good things and leave bad things (like common, cheap, amateur-like propositions) out of the system.

Well, taste is a curious thing. I find your disdain for capital letters at the start of sentences to be lazy at best and rude at worst. I'm sure you have a good reason for writing that way. Maybe your shift key s broken. So, I get over it. Similarly with iPhoto you can ignore and not use any of the bits you dislike. Want to make a slideshow that uses no template? Use another app - and guess what... they all integrate with iPhoto. Don't like the book template? Make your own in Quark or InDesign and they integrate with iPhoto too.

Printing - as opposed to making a keepsake - like in every Mac app - is under the File menu. Advanced computer users would know that 😉

Regards

TD

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Answer 6

Florian573 Author

Level 1

5 points

Nov 25, 2010 12:21 PM in response to Yer_Man

...just if anyone shares my doubts about iPhoto: picasa (yes its from google) works really well on mac now, allows you keep your fotos organized also in normal file stucture (as opposed to the mess in iPhotos internal structure), has many features, that iPhoto has (places, faces, tagging..) and is really fast!

f

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Answer 7

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,396 points

Nov 25, 2010 12:28 PM in response to Florian573

But... no integration with the OS, among other things.

Regards

TD

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Answer 8

Marc41

Level 1

0 points

Nov 25, 2010 2:27 PM in response to Florian573

I share the disappointment of the version 2011 of iPhoto and with TimeMachine, I went back to the previous version (iPhoto 8.1.2) far superior to iPhoto 9.1

In v.9.1, it is cumbersome to assign places; I hate the tiny map that we are obliged to open in the info pane. The Mail option in v.9 is less convenient than in v.8. It is the first time that I feel a "downgrade" in the iPhoto. Many other changes, all for the worst.

I have 15000 photos and over 900 places in my iPhotoLibrary. iPhoto9 did a mess in converting some of the places and does not list them properly.

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Answer 9

PaulWith

Level 1

13 points

Dec 3, 2010 8:07 AM in response to Florian573

Upon launching iPhoto 11 it updated my iPhoto database, which happens to be on a server so that I can get to the photos from different machines if I want to. Of course, the updated iPhoto database is not backward compatible with earlier versions of iPhoto. To make matters worse, iPhoto 11 isn't available for G5 machines.

I guess Apple wants us to chuck our G5 machines and buy new hardware. I should note that my G5 tower is far faster than my MacBook Pro and does everything I need, so I'm quite angry about this failure on Apple's part to consider the customer.

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Answer 10

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,396 points

Dec 3, 2010 8:20 AM in response to PaulWith

Before iPhoto updated that Library you got a warning. It told you that older versions of the Library could not open the Library. You were warned and still you persisted. And you're angry?

To make matters worse, iPhoto 11 isn't available for G5 machines.

iPhoto 11 requires 10.6, and that requires an Intel Mac. This is not news. It's on the box. But you persisted and still you're angry?

Apple hasn't made a G5 machine in more than 4 years. How long did you think Apple will continue to burden the apps and the OS with legacy code for an architecture it hasn't worked in for more than 4 years?

Regards

TD

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