Giving Apple feedback

I'm surprised the feedback email address works. I'd like everyone on earth to email Apple now and ask for a Library merge feature for iPhoto.

TidBITS - Leopard 10.5.2: TidBITS Complains, Apple Listens, Sort Of

...If you have an ADC account (anyone can get one, they're free), you
can submit bugs via Apple's BugReporter.
http://developer.apple.com/products/online.html
http://developer.apple.com/bugreporter/

Alternately, I have been told many, many, many times by Apple folks
that mailto: feedback AT apple.com DOES work, all the email IS read by
humans, and that customer voice DOES matter...
-Andrew

Here's the dedicated iPhoto feedback form in case you'd like to vote for Library merge ...

MacBook kb update: related to an odd login problem?

There's an Apple firmware fix out for the MacBook:

MacBook and MacBookPro get keyboard update - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

...Today Apple released a keyboard update for both the MacBook and the MacBook Pro notebooks. In regular Apple style, their release notes are not extremely profuse, 'This MacBook and MacBook Pro firmware update addresses an issue where the first key press may be ignored if the computer has been sitting idle. It also addresses some other issues....

Periodically, when I wake my sleeping MacBook, it accepts a single keystroke in the login pw dialog then stops responding. I close the lid to put it back to sleep, open it, and all is fine.

I'll see if this fix makes this problem go away.

Last whines of the RAZR - it's not easy to clean it out

This past week Facebook was fronting for the Hotel California (You can checkout, but you can never leave...). Years ago I had a similar experience with trying to eliminate a Microsoft Passport account -- later Microsoft cleared that up.

It's no surprise. I've been in the startup gig. "Erase customer data" is the sort of thing that never gets beyond "priority C" -- but funding ends mid-way through the "A list". Facebook is unusually bad, but not qualitatively different.

On the other hand, there's the Motorola RAZR from Hell. There's no easy way to leave that sucker!

I did it anyway.

I'd replaced the Sprint V3M RAZR with a low cost AT&T Nokia (better phone too) enroute to iPhone 2.0. It's about twelve months old and in surprisingly good shape -- so I wanted to get the phone to someone who'd really use it. Any money for me would be nice.

I probably paid $150 to $200 less than a year ago, Second Rotation offered me $50 (shipping included). Motorola phones depreciate fast. The price/hassle ratio was good enough for me, so I accepted the offer. I rounded up all the gear, including tracking down the original 64MB MicroSD card.

Then I had to erase my tracks a bit. I'm not worried about someone plumbing the on-phone memory, I just didn't want my contact list available. Turns out Motorola never bothered to provide a complete phone clean-up utility.

Here's what I had to do:

1. I tried calling with the phone and got a reassuring "not activated" message.
2. From the manual I learned of the Security Menu options to remove contacts and "reset" the phone. I needed to know the security code to do this, but I'd never set one up. Turns out the Sprint guy set one up on purchase. Maybe they told me then what it was, but I don't recall it. Happily they followed the convention described in the manual -- the security code was the last four digits of my phone number. Now I know to set one up early.
3. I formatted the Micro-SD card from my desktop (FAT).
4. I found an option to completely clear my call log.
5. I had do do a few other manual content cleanups.

I'll miss my RAZR. It gave me something I could really rale against.

10.5.2 fixes AppleWorks and more

Although 10.5.2 isn't ready for me, it seems that Leopard really has emerged from beta. A commenter to a GT post of mine tells us that 10.5.2 restores a lot of applications that died under 10.5 (but not, of course, Classic).

Gordon's Tech (comments): Leopard breaks AppleWords, what about Classic

After leopard 10.5.2 and graphics update AppleWorks not only works but works better. As do all the apps I had pulled off as not working under leopard. AOL, which crashed under Leopard now works ...

So 10.5.2 is the real 10.5.0. That means we have two more updates before it's truly solid, and that people who need to get work done might consider 10.5.3.

iPhoto Library Manager merge testing

I did some testing of iPhoto Library Manager's Library merge abilities using two test Libraries. My test Libraries included:

1. video in both
2. edit of a few images (see if import both original and current)
3. comments, keywords (overlapping and distinct), titles
4. event comments
5. album comments
6. album name collision: smart and dumb
7. keywords
8. ratings
9. events

iPhoto was inexplicably crashy, pre-merge -- when I was creating the test Libraries. Otherwise the merge went as expected. All of the above metadata, including both "Current" and "Original" images and video were all imported. As expected the following data was lost:

Smart albums (become dumb albums)
Books
Calendars
Slideshows
Web galleries (these will be turned into photocasts in the merged library)

In terms of metadata preservation this is significantly better than Aperture merger, but I've only tested on small Libraries. I expect to have some real world tests in a week or two.

I am disappointed that Apple's never provide a Library merge tool

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.