Keyword Assistant is not compatible with iPhoto 6

Keyword Assistant doesn't work with iPhoto 6. Ouch. Ouch. Aperture is looking more inevitable all the time.

Mail.app bug: This message could not be saved

OS X Mail (mail.app) started giving me an annoying error message: "This message could not be saved". Fortunately googling on the error string gave me what looks like a plausible solution:

Mail.app on Mac OS X and Courier IMAP Server

In order to use Mail.app effectively with most servers based on Courier-IMAP, you need to set the "IMAP Path Prefix" to "INBOX" in the account preferences.

BBEdit's perspectives on OS X 10.4 and MacTel

This post was a draft last year, but I think the story is interesting enough that it's worth republishing now that MacTel stuff is out. Emphases mine. Mac developers are a determined lot.

Developer::Pipelines | A Mac Text Editor Migrates to Intel

First, with Mac OS X 10.4, the OS itself was no longer a moving target. In earlier releases of the OS, its underlying architecture—notably the kernel APIs—was in a state of flux and subject to change. And change these low-level APIs they did, as Apple refined the kernel and underlying frameworks to make improvements. As a consequence, each new release of the OS left broken applications in its wake, an unpleasant outcome that dissuaded many Mac users from switching to Mac OS X...

In 10.4, the kernel programming interfaces (KPIs) have been frozen, and a versioning mechanism lets drivers and other low-level software handle those situations when the KPIs are changed to support new features. The result is an underlying infrastructure for the OS that's stable and consistent across different platforms. This, in turn, makes the porting process manageable.

According to the BBEdit engineers, Mac OS X 10.4 does a good job at hiding the hardware details, while still providing low-level services (such as disk I/O). In addition, its APIs are mostly platform neutral, which means no special code is required to counter side-effects when invoking the APIs on each platform. Put another way, the code to call an API is identical for both platforms, and the results of the API call are identical; no glue code is necessary.

... BBEdit 8.0, which was released in late 2004, uses the full Unicode conversion and rendering features of Mac OS X. These APIs automatically read a file's encoding scheme and manage the data transfers and file I/O appropriately. By choosing to use Unicode early on, the Bare Bones Software engineers not only expanded the number of languages the editor could support, but also avoided what could have been a serious problem with reading and writing files when migrating to the x86-based Mac platform.

Another key revision made in BBEdit 8.0's code design was that the application began using Mac OS X's Preference Services API, rather than storing binary data in a custom resource. This modification also side-stepped the Endian problem...

TextDrive – Hosting service with WebDav

I'm not in the market for a hosting service at this time, but if I were TextDrive's WebDav server would be very appealing.

200 Ways To Revive A Crashed Hard Drive

This is a handy reference to keep at hand. If the data is really critical I'd just pay a data recovery service. If the data, however, is just nice to have, then try these tips: Tony Sutton's Homepage > Hardware > 200 Ways To Revive A Crashed Hard Drive - Part One - Freeze It.

Why are Apple products so risky?

Another iPhoto release, another hundred thousand lost images. If things run true to form the bug will affect a moderate number of early adopters and will be fixed in a point release.

This is typical for Apple. It's also typical for Microsoft's beta releases. Microsoft's commercial releases are much safer than Apple's.

Why is this?

I think it's because Apple doesn't do beta releases for its major products (they do beta test point releases of the OS). Jobs insists on secrecy, and that strategy has served him well. Secrecy, however, means no testing of new products in real world environments. In other words, no true beta.

In the Apple world, early adopters are beta testers. Beta testers need very robust backups and time to burn. The rest of us need to wait until the beta is done; that's usually after the first patch. If the first patch comes within four weeks of product release then wait for the second patch.

By that measure both iPhoto 6 and Aperture are still in beta. I'm waiting.

Avoid iPhoto 6?

Apple - Support - Discussions - iPhoto crash, 3000 photos now missing ...

Hmmm. Interesting thread. iPhoto 6 is very appealing, but it seems to have the usual Apple issues with a major application update. In addition, a separate thread suggests that techniques for merging Libraries from iPhoto 5 won't work in iPhoto 6.

Overall, I think I'll wait a few weeks and monitor the forum to see how this turns out. For those who haven't yet bought iPhoto 6 -- waiting might be a good idea.