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Apple Updates iPhoto
hrbrmstr writes "Apple released an update to iPhoto, bringing it up to version 4.0.2. From the horse's mouth: 'iPhoto 4.0.2 addresses minor issues with Smart Albums and European books, and provides notification when new versions of iPhoto are available.' Get it from Software Update or from Apple support."
but does a 4.0.x update to iPhoto deserve to be on the front page? I mean, it doesn't even seem like there were any major changes. [Disclaimer: I'm an Apple fan...use iTunes when I am in windows [although i -still- cannot get Rhythmbox to accept .m4a files in the linux world! aaargh!], use an ipod , girlfriend has a G4 that i like a lot]
i saw the baby, and the baby looked at me
I hate people who put up posts saying, "This isn't news! I'm a nerd and this doesn't matter to me! I want a refund!"
I usually find stories about updates to, say, the OS and major applications to be useful. It provides a forum for people to compare notes about the new version.
And yet, despite all this... Did this really merit an article? I'd think that if there's anyone in the world who'd be interested in this it'd be me, and I'm just not. I really don't think that every update, however minor, to every application, however minor, needs to have a piece here.
It's the feature that lets you make an album and arrnage it nicely and get it printed into a physical book. And also be in Europe at the same time.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
iPhoto isn't so much a photo manipulation tool as a way to store and organize your pictures. The iPhoto directory is in ~/Pictures. There is a command in iPhoto to reveal the pic you're looking at in the Finder, so that you can edit in Photoshop or other full-featured editor.
The default behaviour of iTunes is the same: double-click a music file, and iTunes will launch and copy the file into ~/Music/iTunes. I used to fight this, and now I kinda like it, because it automatically puts my music files into folders, by artist. The tough part was wrapping my head around the fact that once I have played my music in iTunes, I can trash the original file because iTunes now "owns" its own copy.
IMHO the rationale behind this is that tools like iTunes and iPhoto are better ways to organize media by its specific metadata than the all-purpose Finder can provide. The Finder is not geared to show us song lengths, or to create playlists, photo albumbs or music CDs.
I agree with you, of all the Apple programs I've used, this one just did not sit right with me. Safari and iTunes are fine applications, and I have very few gripes with them. But iPhoto just frustrated me when I used it back when it came out.
It was slow, and put the photos deep into a hierarchy, which made them a pain in the ass to find when I wanted to manipulate them in Photoshop. And since most of the photos I take are intended to be used for things other than just having around on my computer to be looked at occasionally, iPhoto is more of a hassle that it is a convenience. I just wish I had a better way of organizing my photos than I do now, somewhere in between the complex organization of the way iPhoto does it, and trying to manage them myself (wherein I usually end up with duplicates of photos because I usually don't delete the photos on the camera after I retrieve the photos from it that I need).
Basically, iPhoto is good for people who like amassing large albums of photos of their dog, kids, etc. But it's needlessly time consuming and frustrating if you need to do any serious digital photo editing.
This is true. We import a lot of our images at work into iPhoto, pick our keepers and then bring them into Photoshop but the fact remains that iPhoto is the most unstable (poorly programed?) applications in the iLife suite. We have problems with it on every computer we use it on. I just downloaded and installed the update and it promptly crashed after I started the app. I know that those things happen every once in a while but it happens quite often with iPhoto. Open it up, click on a pic, wait and then crash. If it were more stable it would be great. Right now we are looking for alternatives.
--Residential Interior Design
iPhoto lets you specify any external editor you want to edit the photos with. It's not designed to be a serious photo editing application; it's designed to organize your photo library with lots of metadata. The newer versions do a very good job of this.
But when you start to deal with allot of 6.3 MP photos it starts to get slow. that is one thing that ive noticed. i hope that this update might help that a little. it would be better to see posts like this update fixed this but didnt fix that instead of why is this post here.
I bought iLife at the beginning of last year, as I really wanted iDVD. At the time, iLife included iTunes 3, iPhoto 2, iMovie 3, and iDVD 3. I missed the free upgrade by a matter of weeks. Since then, I paid for the upgrade to Panther, and renewed my .mac account. With the exception of iTunes, all that software is now obsolete. I would like to have the current versions, but there is no upgrade path. I am not interested in Garage Band, so it just doesn't seem worth the money with everything else I paid Apple this past year. There is no upgrade path to the current versions, short of buying a new copy (at full price) of iLife '04. This is very frustrating to me. At the time, I understood having to pay for iLife just to get iDVD, as there are licensed codecs that cost Apple money (I already owned the rest). I can understand charging for Garage Band (it's new). iTunes is free. I paid for Jaguar and Panther without any regret. I know I am whining, but I really wish Apple was more generous with their upgrade paths for their consumer products. Really I am a MacFanBoi, but this is the second worse thing Apple has done in recent years (the first was charging for .mac -- after heavily advertising it a free feature of OS X).
I paid the going retail price for a Windows screen reader and got a free Unix computer!
I am somewhat confused about the commotion about knowing what the file struture is. The reason I use Iphoto is so I don't have to know the file structure. You import you pictures and then by using albums, keywords, ect you can organize. Great stuff.
To use an external editor I right click and choose open in external editor. I can even open multiple pictures by selecting more than one. I make my edits in Photoshop Elements and save them. The data is saved and refresed in iphoto. If I dont like it I can ALWAYS revert back to the original import version (under photos revert to original).
I can backup my library by exporting what I want. So simple.
I get the feeling they may have yanked this update. 8/3/04 9:37PM EST and Software Update does not show the update (I have 4.0.1). Also, the link on the iPhoto support page is bad.
The Apple discussion boards are talking that it's been pulled due to some issues.
If you don't have an iTools login you can still view most everything in the Apple Discussion area.