iPhoto ’09

iPhoto was the second programme in Apple’s iLife suite to be introduced, and therein lies the problem that Apple face with iPhoto. It’s a mature programme, one that has settled into a useful — valuable, even — tool for many users. It provides, and has done for several versions — a decent, and quite capable, array of organisational tools for amateur snapsters, and even has a thing or two to offer to professional photographers. The problem, then, is this — what do Apple do next?

Unfortunately, Apple have set foot on the path, the long, slippery path, toward feature bloat with iPhoto ’09. The good news is that the things that really matter — the basic functionality, the interface — are essentially unchanged. What Apple have chosen to do is add features that don’t really, well, do very much, no matter how excited Phil Schiller may have been when he introduced them last month at Apple’s Macworld swansong.

Facial recognition

Call it arrogance, call it utterly overarching hubris, but I like to think that I’m better at recognising my wife’s face than my computer is. Even a Mac isn’t going to know Debbie any better than I do; I’m not entirely sure, then, why I need a computer programme to help me identify pictures of the lady I’ve spent the last seven years married to. Yes, it’s an interesting novelty, but the fact remains that the Faces feature of iPhoto ’09 takes so much training that it’s not actually useful. Were it simply a matter of clicking once on a photo and saying “Here — that’s the missus. Go fetch!” then I might be singing a different song right now, but a programme that can’t accurately and reliably differentiate between my wife, my father-in-law and my daughter, or indeed one that thinks that I’m a ballet dancer, doesn’t impress. Maybe in future the software will be able to do a better job of picking out people’s faces, but it’s simply not there yet.

Mapping

A keen traveller, I was excited to see support for geotagging added to iPhoto. I travel, I shoot, I upload to Panoramio, which website offers a decently functional mapping feature. I had long wished for a way of tagging my photos’ EXIF data with latitude and longitude information, but my camera doesn’t have a built-in GPS, so I’ve had to rely on manually tagging my images. iPhoto, then, should have been a boon. It’s not. It does, to be sure, offer a way of adding lat-long data to photos. It also, helpfully, now includes one-click uploading to Flickr and Facebook. Neither of these sites, however, is a geographically-oriented venture; I’ve tried placing my photos in iPhoto’s admittedly elegantly-designed and well-implemented mapping interface, but when I upload tagged images to Panoramio, the geographic data simply isn’t recognised. Once again, a marquee feature that simply disappoints.

Otherwise, little is significantly different in this latest version of iPhoto. Photos are still organised into events, but now each event’s information, including description and, of course, location, can be accessed from a little “i” that appears as you mouse over the event in the Events browser. This would be more useful if it weren’t so glacially slow; as it stands, once again we have a new feature that doesn’t actually work terribly well. The same is true of information for individual photos — more than once I’ve found the animation that accompanies the revealing and hiding of a photo’s or event’s information window has been so slow as to leave me wondering if perhaps the entire application had frozen.

I’m disappointed with the latest version of iPhoto. I was curious about Faces, but couldn’t really describe my reaction as disappointment since I had few real expectations of the feature. Places, on the other hand, was something I’d been wanting in iPhoto for quite some time, and I am very unimpressed with its lack of integration with possible the major online use for it. Had nothing else changed, I would simply have dismissed these features as something that maybe I just didn’t get, but that others would find helpful. But when they start to get in the way of my actual work, then I find myself looking on my shelf for my iLife ’08 installer.

Tags: Apple, disappointment, feature bloat, iLife, iPhoto, review, Software

iLife ’09 review

After not inconsiderable (and, at the time of writing, ongoing) grief, I’ve finally received my copy of iLife ’09, the latest iteration of Apple’s lifestyle-app suite. It’s slimmed down in interesting ways — the packaging, typical of just about all Apple’s consumer-level software (including Mac OS X, server edition included), is a small, slightly-larger-than-a-CD-sized box, with, intriguingly, a list of all four applications in the suite on the back.

Yes, all four. And they would be, in the order listed, iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand and iWeb, all of ’09 vintage. iDVD appears to have become Apple’s latest red-headed stepchild, consigned to the software naughty corner along with AppleWorks, OpenDoc and the late, sadly lamented HyperCard. (iTunes, of course, isn’t part of iLife any more; it’s been quietly spun off as an adjunct of Apple’s iPortable line.)

There is, increasingly, a degree of integration between the various members of the ever-shrinking iLife family, but, in the end, they’re four different, individual, stand-along programmes, each with its own focus and purpose. It seems only fitting, then, that Steve’s TechBlog gives each programme its very own review.

iPhoto ’09 Rating:

GarageBand ’09 Rating:

iMovie ’09 Rating:

iWeb ’09 Rating:

Tags: Apple, iLife, review, Software

iLife Up-To-Date needs up-to-dating.

I recently took myself across Tampa Bay to my local Apple Store, there to buy a new iMac. While I was there, I happened to mention to the manager that I was interested in iLife 09, and he assured me that, even though the machine I was buying didn’t have the latest version of iLife installed, it was eligible for Apple’s Up-To-Date programme. 

That evening, I visited the Apple website, and made my way to the iLife Up-To-Date page. I input the iMac’s serial number, and all the other relevant information, and was told 

I clicked on the “chat now” button at the top of the page, and had a lovely conversation with a young Apple lady, who assured me that the serial number in question simply wasn’t in the system yet, and that I should look again the next day.

The very next day I looked again, and saw the same message. I chatted again, this time with a young man who actually managed to convey the shrugging of his shoulders via text message as he suggested that I try printing out an application form and posting it. Quite horrendously last-century, I thought, but I did just that. 

And that brings us to today, fully a fortnight after I bought this machine. Its serial number still isn’t “in the system,” which makes me wonder what “system” Apple are using. The makers of WebObjects and the owners of FileMaker aren’t impressing me overly here. I’ve also tried clicking the “check the status of your order form” link, but that’s not much more helpful. Apparently that system doesn’t know me either. 

And Apple, in their typically Trappist fashion, aren’t giving anything away. The Store section of Apple’s website gnomically states that the software “ships: January.” Well, January’s not long for this world. February is nearly upon us, and there are arses in Cupertino that quite clearly need to be got in gear. 

In the meantime, all I can do is grit my teeth and wish that Apple would refrain from using the expression “pre-order.” Until they figure out how we can post-order, then that prefix is just a tad redundant…

Update

It’s 26th January, and the Mac-centric InterWeb is reporting that that iLife ’09 is to ship tomorrow. I tried again ordering my update online, and got the same lack of results. I again tried the online chat system, and this time Deborah L seemed more interested in selling me AppleCare than in trying to solve my problem.

Twenty minutes on the phone to Apple later, I’ve been assured that I’ll be getting a copy of iLife ’09 in the post as soon as Apple can get it to me. I’ll be posting a review as soon as it arrives and I get chance to have a good play with it.

Another Update

I’ve just had an email from AppleCare, telling me that my software will ship on the 30th, sans shipping and handling charges. Thanks, Scott!

Yet Another Update

A FedEx knock at my door yesterday morning — my copy of iLife ’09 was here. It’s rather good, too. I’ll be writing a full write-up as soon as a handful of outstanding projects are wrapped up. Thanks again, Scott!

Update The Fourth

It would be so lovely just to put this post to bed, but it simply refuses to give up. I was checking my online banking records this morning, as one does, and I noticed a charge from Apple for a little over ten dollars. The only thing I’ve bought lately — or indeed attempted to buy — from Apple has been iLife. It’s odd, though, that the status enquiry function of the iLife Up-To-Date page at the Apple website still has no record of having received an order from me. 

I’ve put in a call to Scott at Apple Customer Care. I’ll be updating once again as soon as he gets back to me.

Tags: Apple, frustration, iLife, language, Software