iPhoto why so suddenly crash?

Did some recent software update break iPhoto completely? What gives?

I've been doing some testing of iPhoto Library Manager merge functions using two small 20 image test Libraries. These are both new, very generic Libraries. I've crashed iPhoto at least six times doing basic manipulations of these test images. I'm not talking merges, I mean editing album names, adding comments, etc.

Weird.

Update 2/18/08: If this turns out to be a persistent problem on 10.4 but not 10.5, the suspicious among us will start suspiciousing ....

OS X 10.5.2 breaks sync services again: new upgrade rule

One of the benefits of reading the Spanning Sync blog is that it's the "canary in the coal mine". Apple routinely breaks everything, but the company seems to have special hatred for synchronization functions.

So it's not surprising that 10.5.2 fixes some sync services bugs, only to introduce new bugs:

Spanning Sync Blog: Mac OS X 10.5.2 Fixes Some Bugs, Introduces Others

This week Apple released Mac OS X Update 10.5.2, and while it fixes the notorious Leopard iCal bug present in 10.5 and 10.5.1, it introduces another bug with identical symptoms, plus others:

• Synchronized events are not reflected in iCal
• Endless sync conflicts when syncing with .Mac
• Duplicate calendars

Our Mac software architect Larry Hendricks has posted a comprehensive discussion of the new problems caused by 10.5.2 and their solutions to the Spanning Sync Google Group.

Apple is aware of these issues, which affect not only Spanning Sync but also applications like Plaxo, Entourage, BusySync, and .Mac itself, and is reportedly working on fixes.

Lots of problems.

Synchronization is very hard to do right, and quite easy to screw up. Apple's been doing the latter, so I'm guessing they've got their "A team" working somewhere else.

I've long said I won't go to "Leopard" until 10.5.3, but now I'm adding a new rule: 10.5.3 or later with Spanning Sync blessings.

Aperture 2: consolidating two iPhoto Libraries

I have several iPhoto Libraries. In theory they can be consolidated with iPhoto Library Manager (which I've registered) or one of several potentially risky techniques, but my tests a few years ago did not go well.

Apple's answer to this problem is "buy Aperture". Since I'm testing Aperture 2.0 prior to purchase I tried merging two libraries "by reference":

Macworld | From iPhoto to Aperture

... When importing pictures, Aperture can copy images into its library, thus creating duplicates of each picture, or it can reference, or point to, the existing files in your iPhoto Library folder. Although you’ll save disk space by referencing your iPhoto files, you’ll lose out on a key advantage of using Aperture: its Vault feature won’t back up referenced files (see “Why Move to Aperture?”).

If you’d like to try out Aperture but aren’t ready to import your images into the program, consider using referenced files as a trial run. When you import images from iPhoto, go to the Store Files pop-up menu in Aperture’s Import pane and select In Their Current Location. If you later decide that you want to use Aperture as your main photo-management tool, you can import the original files from iPhoto by selecting File: Consolidate Masters....

I imported two iPhoto Libraries into a single Aperture Library this way. Each became a project.

The first thing I checked was whether the image counts matched up. There were 2071 + 1772 = 3843 images in my two imported Libraries; but this is the count of "current" images. It doesn't count the originals of any edited images.

Aperture imports an original and "current' image as a stack, so each image is counted. I typed opt-; to collapse all stacks and, happily, my image count then matched the iPhoto total.

So that was nice! Those Libraries didn't have Videos however, and we know Aperture can't handle video files. So we'll see how that goes.

The images keep their titles, comments, ratings and keywords. Smart albums (annoyingly) become "dumb" albums. Much worse -- comments on Rolls, Albums (Collections) and Events are completely lost. Aperture can't handle metadata at that level.

Slideshows and photo books, as well as videos, can't make the move either.

That's a lot of lost metadata...

Update 2/17/2008: I added a third iPhoto Library of 8,000 items, again by reference. This killed Aperture. I got an endless SPOD (spinning pizza of death) when I tried to browse the complete image collection. I had to kill Aperture.

Scott Gruby likes BusySync: Google to iCal synchronization

Scott's an independent Mac developer, so I pay attention to his recommendations ...

Scott Gruby’s Blog » Blog Archive » Simple Google to Mac syncing

... I’ve been longing to easily sync my calendar with Google so that my wife and I can keep our calendars in order. I just started using BusySync from BusyMac. Previously I was using another product, but lately it just seemed to take hours to sync and it bogged down my system. I’ve known the BusyMac folks for years and they used to write Palm software. So far, it works extremely well. Make a change on either side and within 5 minutes, the other side gets the update....

This might work for us, but what I really want is a very high quality Outlook to Google solution. When I last looked I couldn't find the quality I needed (it's a very hard problem).

Google desktop email uploader

I'd have to upgrade to Google Apps premier for this:

Official Google Data APIs Blog: Upload your old email with the Google Email Uploader open source tool

...We're now happy to share the Google Email Uploader with you. It's both a .NET reference implementation of an Email Migration API client, as well as an Apache 2.0 licensed open source project to be extended to upload any type of email archive you have lying around. The Google Email Uploader is available for Google Apps Premier and Education edition users."

So I could put my old Eudora archives online, then use IMAP to bring them to my local Mac ...

A fix to the application dictionary problem and a word annoyance

I know Word 2003 as only a charter member of the death-to-Word club can. Even so, I was reminded to change two things when reading O'Reilly Media's Word Annoyances (ends at Word 2003).

First I removed the default Word custom.dic file and created my own (jfaughnan.dic) file in a folder I backup and control. So no more lost dictionary when I change machines. I then created a Google Apps document [1][2] to hold a copy of the dictionary. I will periodically merge [4] that with my other application specific dictionaries -- which are particularly important on handheld devices [3]. Imperfect, but good enough.

Then I finally paid attention to the Word settings for "smart" [5] Edit and cut/paste, turning off most of the default behaviors.

So I recommend the book (though it doesn't include Word 2007), but I don't agree with their recommendation to use Styles for everything. That's what every book on Word says, and they're all wrong. Styles are too broken to seriously contemplate unless you're a technical writer [6] [7].

--

[1] Incredibly annoying pink color scheme today. I wish Google spent less time being cute and more time fixing their #@$!$ buggy products (such as their custom search widget, which is broken as of this morning).

[2] Ironically Google Docs has its OWN dictionary, so the text file shows a spelling error indicator for every entry! There's no way to edit that dictionary. One day perhaps.

[3] In the long forgotten glory days Palm had a great auto-complete tool with a custom dictionary. Emily's BlackBerry has one too - very important for word completion.

[4] Copy/paste to TextPad, sort and delete dupes, copy/paste back.

[5] aka "Stupid"

[6] Most of them hate Word even more than I do.

[7] Word 2007 includes a complete do-over of Styles but it requires a (funny that) new file format that's incompatible with everything in the megaverse.

Aperture 2: the missing Help items and Apple's manual site

One of the oddities of the demo version of Aperture 2 is the Help menu is empty. I assume this will be fixed soon and that the shipping version will have the same PDF set Aperture 1 had. (It's another question why Aperture doesn't use Apple's Help system. Sometimes I think it's not really an Apple product at all.)

In the meantime an Apple Discussion Group post pointed me to a site I didn't know about: the Apple Manual page. Every Apple product manual shows up there, sorted by publication date. It's a great resource and I'm going to add it to my custom OS X Search widget.

There's also a "page" (query) for Aperture manuals only, but as of today it only has Aperture 1.x manuals. I assume that's a metadata error and we'll soon see the manuals there.