Apple's battery charger - hold off for now

We tried NiMH chargers a few years ago, but we gave up because of high battery defect rates and short battery lifespans.

Apple claimed to address the latter, and I was willing to try them out on the former.

Unfortunately the first two batteries we charged were defective:

Amazon.com: John Faughnan "John G...'s review of Apple Battery Charger 

The first two batteries I charged generated a blinking yellow signal. Either the batteries or the charger are defective; I suspect it's the batteries.

It could be just bad luck, but I suggest waiting a while before ordering a charger.

I'd hold off on this device for a while. Wait until there are at least forty Amazon reviews so we find out how common this problem is.

NAVIGON MobileNavigator and Kensington Dash Mount - my reviews

At this time there are only two automotive GPS iPhone Apps worth considering: TomTom and NAVIGON MobileNavigator. Navigon originally cost about $80, but I bought the US/Canada version on sale for $40. TomTom is about $60 for the same app.

You can purchase real-time traffic and personalized routing services for an additional fee. There is no commitment from Navigon to provide any map updates and no information on map updates on their web site. 


There is no documentation for the MobileNavigator. It desperately needs documentation. Some users recommend the manual for the Navigon 8100T.

We've installed the app on two phones, so the per-phone cost was about $20.  Installation requires 3GB of free space, the installed product uses 1.5GB.

Navigon will not work on an iTouch, but it will work on an iPhone without a data plan. It needs a GPS, but since it has to work even when there's no cell service it's not data plan dependent. My son inherited my 3G but has no data plan, Navigon works on his phone (albeit slowly on startup). The lack of compass doesn't hurt once the car is in motion.

I have had only limited prior use of a traditional GPS device.

Very quickly, my impressions of this app are:

• It feels quite similar to a traditional automotive dedicated GPS. This is not a feature. It is only a 2nd class iPhone citizen. Even Contact integration seems to be an afterthought.
• There's no true search. We've grown so accustomed to search on iPhone Maps.app that we've forgotten how amazing that is -- and how complex. You can't simply enter a street name and choose from all the matches. It's very traditional GPS data entry. It's much easier and faster to find locations on Google Maps, Latitude or iPhone Maps.app than in Navigon.
• The turn directions don't say "take the next exit", they say "right turn in 200 feet".  When approaching exits it may not be obvious whether than's the 1st right exit or the 2nd right exit.
• I believe location services work only with the iPhone GPS. They don't have access to the cell tower triangulation or WLAN location services. So they don't work indoors very well.
• Local "Point of Interest" data in Minneapolis St. Paul is very limited.
• The map voice pronunciation is peculiar. Some local streets names were incomprehensible.
• The graphics are acceptable and visible from a dashboard mount. I remember thinking volume control was a bit odd but I can't remember why.
• Some of the routes we're given have been peculiar. It seems to be avoiding highways.
• You really need a mount to safely use the iPhone as a GPS device. I have ordered the older $21 Kensington car and dash mount because newer models don't fit the iPhone 4. We wanted a device that works with both 3GS and 4. I'll review that separately.
• Your phone gets hot using Navigon while charging. This can be a problem on a hot sunny day if the phone is beneath the windshield. Consider routing air flow to cool the phone.

Overall Navigon needs to be a lot more open about their map update plans. It is at best a 2nd rate iPhone app. The installation package of 3GB is going to be a problem for many users. I'm surprised their map data doesn't compress more than that.

It's worth $20 per phone, but only just worth $40 per phone. It's not worth $80.

Update 8/29/10:

My review of the Kensington dash mount ...

The big appeal of this car dash mount is that it works with both iPhone 3GS/3G and with iPhone 4. Very few devices can do that. 

There are two joints. If you adjust both (don't force it) you can mount this on a van windshield. It has stayed in place for days; the iPhone is a lightweight GPS. It will only adhere to glass or smooth plastic, not vinyl. For any other surface you need to use the adhesive mount, the suction cup will bind to that. 

It is lightweight, and so is the phone. So they'll vibrate, you may need to mount so the phone rests on something. 

The side grips spring out; the button and apparatus feel fragile. I try to only close them as much as needed. 

Works well with a standard Apple power connector. 

Note an iPhone will get hot when used as a GPS in this cradle. The cradle doesn't carry heat away, it is an insulator. You will want to let the windshield air conditioner run to keep the phone comfortable.

Also my route profile was misconfigured to "bicycle speed" and "scenic". I don't know if that was the default or the kids. It explains the peculiar routing
--
My Google Reader Shared items (feed)

iPhone's very annoying calendar color limitation

There are three features of the iPhone Calendar that prove Apple is not made of geniuses ...

1. The maximum alert time is 2 days. Sidekick for DOS 2.1 had longer alert times. If I could kick some engineer's butt for every birthday card I've sent late ....
2. iOS can't handle birthdays for anyone over 77. Let's see - my parents, my aunts ...
3. Calendar colors are assigned per server, not per phone. So my Family Calendar (ActiveSync via Google) and my Corporate Calendar (ActiveSync Corporate) are both assigned the color red [1]. I can't tell them apart visually.

Not only are these stupid blunders, they've been stupid blunders for over a year.

No, Apple is not made up of geniuses. Neither is Google. Both companies have lots of limitations.

[1] Quick tip: Calendar color fix for iPhone and iPod touch
... Calendar on the iPhone will assign colors in a certain order for your first five calendars: red, orange, blue, green, and purple. Afterward, any more calendars are assigned a random color out of those five. To manipulate this, use iTunes to sync only selected calendars in the “Info” tab. First sync the one that you want to be red, then sync again including your second calendar that you want to be orange, and so forth. You can create extra calendars to use to “skip” a color if you wish, then delete later at your leisure...

OS X drag folder to file save dialog - sometimes I love this OS

There are a lot of times I'm really irritated by OS X. Significant chunks of it (ex: Parental Controls) are fubared. Some unchangeable configurations (Spotlight) are annoying. Lots of embedded functionality needs to be stripped out into a separately sold product (iChat).

Sometimes though, it's a real pleasure.

I wanted to save a file to a folder I had open in a window. I dragged the target to the "Save As" dialog window and, as expected, the context changed so I could save to it.

There are other ways to duck file navigation, but this is a very useful method. I don't think it's at all new. I think I read of it years ago. I just rediscovered it because it felt like it should work.

If only the rest of OS X worked so well.

Things I hate: Shinywitebox's novel DRM for iShowU

I like paying for good software. It's a quirk, I admit.

I don't even mind well done Digital Rights Management. Without copy protection the novel software I love would die. I'm okay with how FairPlay works for iPhone apps and movies. I'm fine with long software keys -- I keep mine in a Google Doc I can access anywhere.

Where I go bonkers though is when otherwise good companies decide to introduce novel DRM methods, such as key distribution methods. I can tolerate online registration and binary keys for subscription services like Spanning Sync, but I blow a capillary when vendors like Shinywhitebox, makers of the once excellent and inexpensive iShowU screencasting software, do things like this ...

Licensing & Refunds

... At purchase time, we create an account for you on our system so that you can get instant access to your purchase history and retrieve lost unlock keys if need be. You use these same account details to unlock the product (over the internet). After starting the application, click on the “Unlock ..." button that appears in the first dialog, then enter your email address and password (these are the login details you setup when you purchased from us)...

Additionally, at the time of purchase we send out an email with your current set of “unlock keys”. This is simply an alternative method, which you can use on machine that don’t have an internet connection. If you have purchased a product but have not received your unlock keys please first check your spam folders, and failing that, contact support with the transaction number of the sale.

The keys are XML files.

To add aggravation to injury, SWB has enforced this transition for version 1 of their software, now in legacy mode. When I ran my old software I accepted offered upgrades, thinking I was getting some bug fixes. Along the way I got an entirely new registration process and my old key failed. I had to request a new key (support responded within 10 minutes late at night, which is a bit beyond the call of duty).

Come on gang. Please don't do this to your customers. I like paying to upgrade products I like (in their case the new HD product upgrade fee is a pittance), but I really don't have time for this - just time to rant about it.

Please don't make registration process changes part of "free" updates to legacy products. Please don't institute unique DRM procedures that break the way I track the 200 or so software products I've purchased. Just don't.

Here's hoping SWB is reconsidering ...

Project Shredder begins

Gordon's Rules of Acquisition remind me that the purchase price is often the smallest cost of acquisition. So I like to digest each piece of gear before I bring down new prey.

The last meals have gone relatively well. My mother's iPad and my own iPhone 4 were big bites, but they went faster than expected. The Brother 2140 and updated Airport Express were bought for trouble-free implementation and they worked as expected. Migrating my old 3G to my son was more complicated thanks to AT&T's incomprehensible and undocumented contract rules, but it too has passed.

Since Canon refuses to make the dSLR I want [1], I'm delaying replacement of my aging DigitalRebel. So my path is clear for something more challenging.

Hence Project Shredder.

I am bad at filing. I've always been bad, but it's getting worse. Once the easy stuff is tossed, the hard stuff builds up in bins and boxes. I need a better approach [2].

I have some past experience with document and image scanning including developing document management technologies, but I've never felt that the technology was really ready for my home use. Over the past few years, however, OCR and full text indexing have matured into my zone of acceptably pain-free technology. Adobe's 1996-vintage PDF image/text format has become widely accepted [3]; it's the format I've wanted for fifteen years. The Fujitsu ScanSnap line has been stable and respected for at least ten years, and their space-saving S1300 has gotten a great review from a source I trust.

So it's time to make a stab at this. I'll have more to say in future posts about the S1300 when it arrives, and how the entire process plays out at our home [4]. Look for the "document management" tag for related posts.

-- footnotes --
[1] Stop the 3$!#$% megapixels Canon. Give us ISO.
[2] Adobe, like Microsoft, wasn't always a zombie company.
[3] Though Fujitsu's software distribution strategy may lead me to a Torrent client!
[4] I'll keep the way I file receipts and manuals. Receipts get tossed into a bin in chronological order. Manuals get placed in bookcase boxes in alphabetic order with the date of acquisition written on the front page. I weed receipts by tossing the bottom of the bin, the manuals as I add new ones. This process is so efficient I don't see much room for improvement.

Airport Extreme 802.11n range: better at 2.4 than 5

The last time I messed with my home wireless network I jumped through hoops to connect an old 802.11b iBook (yes, the computer, not the app) to an early 2009 Time Machine. A few weeks after I bought that Time Machine Apple revved the line.

Now that I've replaced the Airport Express that now powers my mother's iPad with a new one, I'm sure Apple will rev it along with the upcoming iTV.

In the meantime, I've made one new discovery. In my home, 802.11N 2.4 GHz has significantly greater range than 802.11N 5 GHz. Apparently this is not uncommon.

When I configured the Express to WDS Extend it worked well in our dining room, but it couldn't connect in the living room. I brought it back to the dining room and manually switched the WDS setting from the original 5GHz network I'd selected to the standard 802.11N network [2]. (Time Machine broadcasts both plus 802.11G and 802.11B.) It then connected from the dining room. I repeated this to confirm it wasn't a chance glitch.

So our current (all wireless [1]) home network looks like this:

• Time Machine: 802.11 n/g/b with 802.11n 5GHz and 2.4Ghz
• Airport Express: Extends Time Machine, WDS connection is 802.11n 2.4 GHz
• iMac i5: 802.11n 5 GHz (it's about 10 feet directly below the Time Machine)
• iMac G5: 802.11g
• MacBook Intel: 802.11n 5GHz at the moment, but I bet I have to switch it back to 802.11N 2.4 GHz to get more range
• iPhone 4: 802.11n 2.4 GHz
• iPhone 3G and 3GS: 802.11g
• iPhone 3 (used as iTouch): 802.11g
• iBook: would be 802.11b but I've retired it. It wasn't getting any use in the iPhone era.

Note Apples says the Airport Express will connect up to 10 clients, and the Airport Extreme will connect up to 50 users (I'm not sure where my older Time Machine sits). With our iPhones and guest devices it's not hard to get near to the Express limits.

See also:

• Airport Extreme: Firmware update, Time Capsule bugs, tips and fixes
• Fixing a broken WDS wired to wireless bridge on an Apple Airport Express

[1] I thought the "all wireless" setup would be temporary following some home reconfiguration, but it's worked so well I've stayed with it. I'm surprised.
[2] From Airport Utility select Airport Express. Choose Manual setup, then Wireless. Select the non-5GHz or 5GHz through Wireless Network Name.

--My Google Reader Shared items (feed)

The hidden ever growing iTunes photo cache bug

There's a design flaw/bug in iTunes. When it syncs photos to an iPod or iOS device it creates a photo cache folder. That folder never shrinks, it only grows.

That's merely annoying on the desktop, but it does the same thing in iPhoto. To purge the cache you have to delete it, which requires opening the iPhoto image Package..;

iTunes: Photo sync creates iPod Photo Cache folder

... Control-click the iPhoto Library file and choose Show Package Contents from the shortcut menu.

In the iPhoto Library window, locate the iPod Photo Cache folder and drag it to the Trash...

My hidden iPhoto cache was 1.5 GB.

How exceedingly annoying. 

iPhone for kids: The Achilles Heel

For one brief shining moment I thought Apple had a good kid platform ....

Gordon's Tech: The kid's iPhone - configuration and AT&T

...As a computer, his iPhone has one large advantage over his desktop accounts. On the desktop Apple and Google together have totally broken OS X Parental Controls (MobileMe is the worst). On the iPhone, once you remove Safari and YouTube, you have Wikipanion and and Wolfram Alpha and Google Earth and Public Radio.app and New York Times.app...

That was before my intrepid 13 year old tutored me.

The problem is that a lot of iPhone apps use WebKit, and blocking Safari doesn't block WebKit.

So Google Earth has a Wikipedia layer. Click on the W icons, and it launches WebKit. Click around a while, and eventually you get to places I don't want my kid to go.

Scratch Google Earth.

AppBox Pro has lots of little tools he might like -- but it also includes iGoogle. (Why? Don't ask me.)

Scratch AppBox.

Wolfram Alpha looked good. Math, research, but no web. Oops. Except for the "Search the web" link at the bottom of every page that opens an embedded WebKit page.

Scratch Wolfram Alpha.

Houston, we have a problem.

Update 10/4/10: Google's AdMob ads give YouTube access from Pandora.

Location sharing on iPhone: Latitude, PlaceTrack and Latitudie

The Google-Apple war went public when Apple blocked the release of Latitude.app -- even before they blocked Google Voice.

With iOS4's support for background location sharing, I wondered when we'd see something like Latitude. (MobileMe also enables location tracking, but you can't share that information.)

About two months ago ago PlaceTrack tried to do this. Had it been accepted by Apple it would have updated Google's Latitude service. Unsurprisingly, since it's a Google-related product, it was rejected (limbo technically).

Yes, the Google-Apple war sucks.

Surprisingly, there's another App that updates Latitude - Latitudie. I wonder if it was accepted because it was first submitted internationally. It's $2 and has had mixed reviews. It it had better reviews, or if some geek I trust used it, I'd give it a try.

Gowalla shares locations, but it doesn't integrate with Latitude. It also has an annoying business model.

At the moment I'm most interested in Latitudie. I'm wary of putting it on my phone though -- I'd like to read a review from someone I trust.

Configuring iTunes to reference apps from a shared folder

9/25/10: With the latest release of iTunes it doesn't work any more anyway, you no longer get the prompt to find all your missing apps at once. So never was safe, and now doesn't work at all. Retained for historical purposes, plus it has some interesting links and a FairPlay discussion.
---
Oops. Don't do this, it causes iTunes to put every app on every phone synchronized with the share. Evidently iTunes writes metadata into the app file! I wonder if it's an extended attribute on OS X. A terrible design!
----

Sharing DRMd (FairPlay) material, such as videos and iPhone Apps, in a family is fraught. It's technically complex, and it's commercially complex. Rights holders, for example, probably want a BrainLock implant for every customer, so only one person can ever hear an iTunes song.

Given the commercial issues, Apple's FairPlay licensing is surprisingly generous. Wikipedia has the best (only?) summary, though since they're describing music it's obviously dated (Apple store music is rarely DRMd now) ...

• The track may be copied to any number of iPod portable music players (including the iPhone).^[2] (However, each iPod/iPhone can only have tracks from a maximum of five different iTunes accounts)
• The track may be played on up to five (originally three) authorized computers simultaneously.^[2]
• A particular playlist within iTunes containing a FairPlay-encrypted track can be copied to a CD only up to seven times (originally ten times) before the playlist must be changed.^[3]

Fraser Spiers' iPad educational project shows how this works for apps. He configured five authorized computers and one master iTunes account, so all the apps could be distributed to a large number of iPads. (I assume Fraser compensated the App developers somehow as this is a bit outside the usual scope of distribution.)

FairPlay may be generous, but iTunes really expects a single user. Even if every user on a computer shares a single iTunes account (ex: Dad's account), each has its own content collection. With iTunes 9 Apple enabled a sort of sharing, but it requires physically copying files.  Even in the days of TB drivers this can be wasteful.

When it comes to Mobile Applications (.app) this is particularly annoying. Each user's apps get updated separately for example [1]. So if Emily and I share the 1.5GB NAVIGON.app we each have a copy, and each copy is updated separately.

On the other hand, if you have every device sync to a single iTunes, users can't sync to their individual iCal or Address Book and content ratings and Smart Playlists become a bit of a struggle (ex: "last played" rules assume only one listener!). So in the old days many of us geeks gave each iPhone user in the family their own account. We used tricks like iTunes music 'include by reference' feature and its amazingly versatile drag-and-drop media behavior to sort of work around these limitations.

Now that most of sync to Google Apps via Active Sync rather than directly to our desktop accounts it really makes most sense to sync every device to one account (screw ratings). I'm doing that for the kids, but Emily still has her own account. Thanks to the 'include by reference and media drag and drop' technique we do ok with media, but Mobile Apps don't support include by reference. You have to copy them. So I've been using Apple's Family Sharing for apps only; it monitors additions to the master iTunes Library and copies the apps to her iTunes Library.

This had an annoying side-effect that all of our App updates had to be done twice, but when I bought the 1.5GB NAVIGON turn-by-turn GPS app things got really annoying. For geeks of my generation, 1.5GB is a lot of storage to waste (including backup of course).

I tried various tricks to get her iTunes to reference Mobile Apps stored on a Public Share on the computer that holds both our accounts. I tried Aliases and a I tried Symbolic Links to both apps and to the Mobile Application folder. Nothing worked ... until ... by chance ... I stumbled on what did work.

This is what I do now.

First I install apps to her account normally. Since we have Family Sharing setup anything I add to my account will be added to her account.

Then I did something like this (To be honest, I need to play with this a bit more, but if you're a geek this is all the hints you need. My apps are stored in a shared folder for which she has read/write privileges. If you're not a geek you shouldn't be reading this.):

1. In her account, move her .app files OUT of her iTunes Music:Mobile Applications folder.
2. Start iTunes for her, and right click on any of her App icons in the App view. I choose 'Get Info'. The App gets an exclamation mark next to it and ITunes asks if I want to locate the file. (Maybe I double clicked on the exclamation point?)
3. Choose Show In Finder (or ?). iTunes asked me where the file was. I navigated to the file in the shared folder on MY account and it accepted it. iTunes then asked me if I wanted to use the same path to update all other missing apps

That did it. Emily's iTunes now includes my Apps by reference instead of copying them. I only do one set of updates, and NAVIGON.app appears only once. Please note I'm not getting any extra privileges from doing this, I'm just saving disk space and update time.

All I need to do is periodically clean up her Library, update mine, and repeat this trick.

See also

• Sync iTunes Libraries Between Two Macs
• Working around iTunes lack of multi-user support
• The flaw in iTunes: 2 users, 2 iPods - and our brain locked future
• Tunes and the multi-iPhone family - two approaches

[1] Now that some App updates are iOS 4 specific, this ability to choose when to update may be a feature, but not I'm really getting complicated.

Blogger: a heartfelt cry of anguish about their rich text editor

I know it's pointless, but I had to vent. I posted this in Google's Blogger feedback forum ...

Please fix paragraph definitions. Please, please, please. - Blogger Help 

I've been using Blogger for years. Ever since you moved to using embedded styles in the new editor it's been a misery to use. I won't bother with the details, because if you're not seeing the issues every day you're not bothering to do QA. (If you want to start doing QA, try editing old posts, try using blogthis! on a mac, try editing with Windows Live Writer, etc. Or just hire me to run your QA program.)

It's driving me stark, raving, mad.

Something is really wrong. Something that can't be fixed with a few patches and hacks. You need to drastically rethink your rich text editor strategy, starting with how the editor manages paragraph definitions and then reconsidering the entire approach to style sheets.

For the moment, given where you are in the product life cycle, add a button that removes all styles completely and reformats using only data elements that the rich text editor is able to manipulate.

And, if you have been doing QA, and you don't know about these issues, please fire the SVP for QA.

I need stronger drink.

--My Google Reader Shared items (feed)

Buying a printer for our home - curiously difficult

I've been fond of our giant-sized five year old Brother MFC-7820N black and white laser printer, scanner and fax machine. It was never as rock solid as our LaserWriter Select 360 (20+ year lifespan if you could find cartridges), but by the standards of 2005 it was a gem. The competition was dismal. HP combined hideous hardware with worse software, and the device drivers for Epson and Canon devices were almost as bad.

The 7820N has come to the end of days though. It jams easily if the paper tray is less than half-full, and the web-based diagnostics [1] tells me the internal print engine is nearing end-of-life. It needs to be replaced. That turns out to be trickier than one would imagine.

It's tricky for several reasons. Printers have been clobbered by ink jet technology churn [1], premature maturation and commoditization [2], brand loss [3], and technology transition (more on that). OS X users have the further problem of very poor device driver support -- you don't want to use anything that doesn't ship with OS X [4].

The technology transition is having a strong impact now. Apple doesn't sell black and white or color laser printers any more and iOS devices like the iPad and iPhone, the future of personal computing, don't print at all. Google's ChromeBooks to come are struggling to print.

Looking at this marketplace in transition it's clear that I need to go as simple as possible. That means black and white (grayscale really) laserwriter with a good record of reliable cartridge availability, long product life cycles, and OS X 10.5 "native" device drivers [5]. That will probably be another Brother printer. I'll also be looking for quiet operation and compact size.

For now I'll put our old MFC into the basement and use it as a standalone fax machine [6] and photocopier. If we keep the paper tray full it should work for years like that, and the occasional jam will be tolerable.

The upside of this transition is I can finally attack the scanning problem with a machine that's designed for producing B&W PDFs off a paper feed. The MFC vendors were never going to provide a good solution for a market as small as this one.

I'll update this post with what I choose, but it's probably going to be the Brother 2170W or  Brother HL-5370DW. Size, cartridge cost and availability, and native OS X support will probably be the determinant (price is almost irrelevant really) - so I'm betting on the 2170W or non-networked equivalent. Given issues with wireless security and peripherals I suspect it will end up being connected to a USB port on a Mac or AirPort Express/Extreme (back to the future!) but it may be useful to have other options.

Note that all laser printers come with "starter cartridges", so after initial testing you need to order a cartridge separately.

Update: I ordered the $80 Brother 2140, the same device I bought for my mother last year. It was $50 less than the 2170W. I used the money I save to order an Airport Express (I gave my old AE to my mother). So for $40 more than the 2170W I get to extend my LAN coverage and I get optional AirTunes support. It uses the very standard and widely available TN360 cartridge and has had native OS X driver support for many years.

Update 8/18/10: Installed the 2140. I didn't bother with Brother's software except to copy the manual to my "reference" folder. I ended up just attaching it to a G5 iMac which is now a print server; the Airport Express wasn't necessary. My 10.5 and 10.6 machines used native drivers. Painless - as expected.
-- 

[1] A miserable technology. It has never worked reliably, and a dying HP trapped the industry into a disposable printer and costly cartridge hidden-price business model.
[2] There's no real reason to go beyond 300 dpi, and that was achieved fifteen years ago. Color would be nice, but we still can't do it well at consumer price points -- and the market has lost interest. In a high tech industry reaching this kind of peak is a problem.
[3] Brands became meaningless and quality plummeted. This afflicted all parts of the computer industry from 1998 to 2008 with one notorious exception.
[4] See my links below on why device drivers are so bad everywhere. In OS X the small market and Apple's complete disinterest made things worse. I think with 10.6 bundled device drivers are tolerable, but you don't want to depend on a manufacturer for drivers.
[5] We still print from a 10.5 machine.
[6] The zombie technology that won't die. Sort of like Adobe Flash but worse.

See also:

Other stuff

• TidBITS Business Apps: ScanSnap S1300 vs. Doxie: Two Portable Document Scanners
• Apple: Mac OS X v10.6: Printer and scanner software (native drivers)

My stuff

• Why device driver software is so bloody awful ... (2004)
• The sorry state of OS X device drivers (2009)
• Epson vs. Canon scanners: who has better OS X support (2007)
• My MacBook fan was roaring. Why? (2008 - Canon)
• Canon's CanoScan drivers: the horror and the Vuescan alternative
• Obnoxious old Epson Scan bug: EPSON Scan cannot be started

iPhoto unable to import an Aperture JPEG from 16 bit image with grayscale profile

I've just run into a very irritating bug with Aperture 2 and iPhoto 8.1.2.

I scanned a B&W image in as a 16 bit grayscale TIFF. I can edit it in Aperture and I can import the ORIGINAL tiff into iPhoto. I can edit the original in iPhoto.

The problem comes when I export a version as a JPG from Aperture. iPhoto can't import it, though it renders without a problem in Preview!

Grrr.

The only way I was able to get a JPG version [1] of this image into iPhoto was

1. Edit in Aperture. Export TIFF as 8 bit image.
2. Import 8 bit TIFF back into Aperture. Export JPEG.
3. Import JPEG into iPhoto

So iPhoto can handle an 8 or 16 bit grayscale TIFF, but it can't handle the JPGs that Aperture 2 creates from a 16 bit TIFF.

I wonder if this is related to an old iPhoto 6 grayscale bug (iPhoto 8 grayscale inverted, iPhoto 5 version of this bug)...

Update: This is indeed a version of the 5 year old bug referenced above. Instead of fixing the bug, Apple's iPhoto engineer simply blocked import of these images with a cryptic error message. Got the problem solved in record time. He had to use a cryptic error message, or customers would have figured out what was going on.

This is from the Silverfast forum ...

... had this problem and "solved" it. iPhoto is designed to work with RGB images. You can import B&W images into iPhoto, but they need a supported color profile to be able to be read. Most scanners will default the scan of a B&W photo to a Black & White Color profile, rather than RGB. 

If you are using a real silver halide film designate the file as Color of some type before you make your scan. Then you will have no problems. Go to Apple.com > Support > Discussions > iPhoto '09 > Installing and using iPhoto '09 Topic: Interesting iPhoto "unrecognized file" issue. Before I learned of this solution, there was unimaginable frustration.

In Aperture I set the color profile to Adobe RGB on export and iPhoto accepted the JPG.

$%$#!%$%$#%@#$%@ lazy Apple.

It's Alive! Blogger lives!

First Blogger silently fixed a 12 month old 5000 post bug.

Now they've introduced their first significant feature change in years.

Blogger has graduated from "Walking Dead" to at least "Sick". It lives.

Now if Google does a mobile version, and gets their greatest geniuses to fix new-editor paragraph spacing (including in the #$!$# blockquotes) and style vs. inline formatting bugs, I'll move it to "Quick".

In honor of Blogger's resurrection with the new comment filtering, I've disabled moderation and captchas on this blog. We'll see how it works!