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A Christmas Easter Egg in iPhoto?

Posted by Cliff on from the stumbling-upon-extra-functionality dept.

GodotJr writes "Early Christmas morning I downloaded some digital pictures into iPhoto on OS X 10.2.3. My trusty iBook began playing what sounded like a repeating Irish jig. I thought I had accidentally started iTunes, but no, only iPhoto was running. The 'jig' continued until I quit the application at which point a childs voice said something I didn't quite catch (!) and then a choir belted out 'Hallelujah!', once, and was silent. A restart of iPhoto did not get me an encore performance. Has anyone else experienced this?"

11 of 72 comments (clear)

  1. too much eggnog? by ZeroLogic · · Score: 3, Funny

    i'm thinking somebody had a really good xmas!

  2. If this Easter Egg is for real... by MonTemplar · · Score: 3, Funny

    What does this say about the amount of work that Apple's developers are putting into the apps that are supposed to be tempting over the Wintel crowd?

    --
    -MT.
    1. Re:If this Easter Egg is for real... by c13v3rm0nk3y · · Score: 3, Insightful
      What does this say about the amount of work that Apple's developers are putting into the apps that are supposed to be tempting over the Wintel crowd?

      Er, nothing?

      Seriously, dropping an Easter Egg into an app is usually pretty trivial. I mean, if you code with a certain amount of respect for the Model-View-Controller paradigm, an Easter Egg is just another View. An afternoon's work, and given the complexities of other stuff thqt iPhoto does, probably doesn't measurably impact on the final design at all. It ain't gonna affect the code freeze, QA and release milestones, that's for sure. If the argument is that the inclusion of an Easter Egg implies lower overal product quality, I respectfully disagree. From my experience, the presence or not of an Easter Egg is not any reasonable rulestick of overall quality.

      Anyway, an Easter Egg is just something we do to make coding fun on slow days, and to sneak a pun or inside joke into the product. It's also a way I can get my mom to see that I really did work on that application. Though, really, there isn't any true reason my mom needs to run the app I work on. But there you have it.

      --
      -- clvrmnky
  3. Re:Look at iPhoto's about box! by Twirlip+of+the+Mists · · Score: 5, Insightful

    iPhoto includes some recordings of classical music that you can play over a slide show. That's what the About box is talking about.

    I loaded pics into iPhoto yesterday, too, and nothing like this happened.

    Between the fake Sony/Nintendo story from a few days ago, yesterday's fake iTunes/Ogg story, and this story, I'm starting to wonder if we're seeing a new form of trolling. Rather than posting silly comments, the trolls have started submitting silly stories.

    And they're getting good at it.

    --

    I write in my journal
  4. Easter Eggs forbidden? by alpha264 · · Score: 3, Informative

    According to this pdf:
    http://www.dvmug.org/ApplePRESS/ApplePRESS1002.pdf (or view as HTML with Google)

    "Apple has strictly forbidden engineering staff to create Easter Eggs in software created at Apple's campus"

    Can anyone confirm?

  5. Not only that... by Badge+17 · · Score: 4, Funny
    I have discovered that the "Hallelujah" sound file... is an OGG file!
    </sarcasm>
  6. Re:Look at iPhoto's about box! by selderrr · · Score: 4, Informative

    Well, honestly (and this is no troll) I hope you're right : because if you are, /. editors will perhaps finally be forced to READ the stories that are submitted, which is perhaps the best thing to happen here.

    Lately I have the impression that the editors don't even read the submission itself, only the title ! I understand that there must perhaps be a zillion submissions every day, but comeon...

    Taco : as much as an innovative moderation system was needed for comments as the userbase grew exponentionally, you also need to have a brilliant concept to moderate the editors (except you and Hemos offcourse :-) so that the readers can give some feedback except thru trolling !

    --
    When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
  7. Stupid? by Cliff · · Score: 3, Informative
    s/stupid/fun christmas story/

    This is the the kind of mindset I'm in, right now. I'm sorry it doesn't jive with yours, but I don't think it all that impossible that Apple would code an easter egg in iPhoto for Christmas, and figured it would be interesting to see if anyone else ran in to this kind of behavior.

    Heck, this is a sectional story, so I figured it was appropriate. How else are you going to know what is going on around the computing world without polling your peers?

    1. Re:Stupid? by shaitand · · Score: 3, Funny

      Cliff, just wack em with the slashdot editor hammer!

  8. Look in the bundle, people by arekusu · · Score: 4, Informative

    iPhoto includes two .mp3s in it's bundle:

    iPhoto/Contents/Resources/Music/Jesu, Joy Of Man's Desiring.mp3 (3 MB)
    iPhoto/Contents/Resources/Music/Minuet in G.mp3 (1.7 MB)

  9. Windows X-Mas surprise. by Vodak · · Score: 3, Funny

    that's nothing. I booted up my Windows machine at exactly 12:01am Christmas day and I was greeted to a soundfile of Bill Gates braking jingle bells.

    =]