Automatically and manually rotated photos don't count as edits?

Apple, you have quite a double-standard in iPhoto.

When photos tagged with orientation information (rotation info) by the camera are imported to iPhoto, they are auto-rotated during the import process, and a copy of the 'Original' that hasn't been auto-rotated goes into the 'Originals' or 'Masters' (for iPhoto 9) folder. The auto-rotated version goes into a 'Modified' folder and is what is displayed/referenced inside iPhoto after the import.

This is a fact - it happens, and has happened for several versions of iPhoto. I'm not going to argue about the waste of hard drive space [thousands of] auto-rotated photo 'Original' backups take up, because I can understand the strict reasoning that yes, this auto-rotated version is NOT the original, so make a backup copy of the original in the 'Originals' folder. This logic is very technically accurate, from a computer's standpoint, at least.

By this logic, the un-rotated version is the original, and the rotated version has been modified: it is another version—an edit of the original.

But it's not.

According to iPhoto, going against this established logic pattern, the reality is that iPhoto does not count rotated photos as 'Edits.'

Try rotating a photo, or importing photos that have been auto-rotated during the import, and then creating a Smart Album for 'Photo + is + Edited.' You won't see those photos there (unless you made other edits to those photos, like changing the brightness, etc).

This is a blatant contradiction. It is the opposite of what iPhoto has trained us to expect by its own logic of the whole 'Original' vs. 'Modified' scheme.

Rotations should throw the 'Edited' flag the moment a new version is created of the file, am I right? Having that smart album switch for 'Edited' is useless if you wanted to find all images that differ from what was shot on the camera. And they haven't even been touched outside of iPhoto!

You devs working on iPhoto - please explain your hipocrisy! And make up your mind - is the photo original or not?