I want to stress that I'm not arguing with you. My only reason for making this post is for others who may read this thread at some point in the future. The points you raise turn up here from time to time and offer the opportunity to illustrate the thinking behind iPhoto.
Neither does anything I say invalidate the approach taken by other developers. There are positives and negatives in every approach.
With respect, you're confusing your files with your data. There is no restriction whatever on the acces to your data with iPhoto. There's a very tiny limit on your access to the files.
Iphoto is a database. It's for folks who want to manage the data and are not so bothered about the files. Like iTunes. Like AddressBook etc etc etc
Here's the leap: A file is not the same thing as the data it contains. Your novel is not that Word doc, but the sentences that it contains. That mp3 file is not the song and that jpeg is not your photo.
So, import the photos, manage the photos, organise them, edit them, work with and use them in any way you want. Think photos. You never need to think files. Connect your camera, import. Everything you do is done via the interface. There is simply never a need to think files. Just think photos.
So this isn't actually true at all:
Generally, though, Apple restricts access to your photos to a few controlled ways.
Quite the opposite is true: Apple offers you more access to your Photos when using iPhoto (or Aperture) than just about any other method I have found - throughout the OS your Library is there and available in just about every app on your Mac. Even better, that access is organised by iPhoto. Search the iPhoto Library from within the Media Browser or the Dialogue. It's organisied by you on your system and a whole lot faster and more convenient.
I understand that this was done at some point between iPhoto v6 and v9 because of the number of people who were poking around in the folder structure and corrupting their database,
What was done was putting the files in the Library into a package. But here's the thing: the access to the photos didn't change at all. Rooting around in the Library folder was never supported. It was simply never the way to access those files.
Instead of treating the problem and making iPhoto more open and robust in allowing users and other programs to interact with their raw data, Apple chose instead to treat the sympton by restricting direct access to your own data except through specific programs and plug-ins. In case you haven't noticed, this bothers me.
Well - allowing that you're confusing files with data - this does illustrate a choice by the developers. Picasa, as you mention, allows you access the files (but a whole lot less access to the data) but to do this litters your Hard Disk with hundreds of invisible files created trying to track the location and changes you make. That's a design choice. Swings and roundabouts.
The folders names are asinine because they are meaningless to a user.
With respect, "asinine" is not the same as "meaningless", and frankly, just because you didn't get it a first go doesn't mean that others didn't.
But for a user, the moment at which they import their photos has no significance whatsoever and bears no connection to the content of the photos or the time and place at which they were taken.
Well there has to be some organising principle, the developers chose this one, and as the user never accesses these folders anyway, it's moot. It's like complaining about the colour coding of the wiring in your car - a driver never needs to access that.
What happens if your computer dies and you want to recover all your files onto a new machine without iPhoto?
That's what back ups are for. And if you're specifically thinking of recovering to a machine without iPhoto then you're going to have more problems than the date - what do you recover? Originals? Edited versions? Both? What about metadata? And remember, the date and times of the original photos are safe in the files.
Put another way, I know of no photo app on any system that will allow full data recovery onto another system without that app. The best any will offer is you get your files back. Some won't even give you your originals back. You can't recover your Lightroom catalogue to a system without LR, you can't recover your Aperture Library to a system without Aperture and you can't recover your Picasa Library to a system without Picasa. So, iPhoto is in pretty good company.
However, if you have a back up then recovering a full dataset to a system with iPhoto is trivial. (And is true of these other apps as well.)
Note too: that the case you mention is specifically about Disaster Recovery. Migration on to other apps is perfectly possible (albeit with the same limitations as other apps have too.)
But fundamentally we have different ideas of what's necessary and what's not. I think it's necessary to control how a program names, stores, and manipulates your files. You seem content to let iPhoto do all that its own way.
And that's why I say iPhoto is not for you. It's swings and roundabouts. For you, file management is important, for me, data management is. I just prefer to organise my photos rather than the files.
Again, I stress, my aim is not to argue with you but to respond to your points for the benefit (I hope) of folks who may read this thread in years to come.
Regards
TD
