Picasa 3.5 for Mac with iPhoto integration

With release 3.5 the free Google Picasa photo manager and editor app is now cross-platform (Intel only on Mac):

Google Photos Blog: Announcing Picasa 3.5, now with name tags, better geotagging and more

... we launched Picasa for Mac as a beta Labs product 9 months ago. Now that Picasa for Mac has almost all the same features as the PC version, we've decided it's time to remove the beta label. Remember that Picasa for Mac is designed to 'play nice' with iPhoto -- Picasa takes a special read-only approach to editing photos stored in the iPhoto library, duplicating files as needed, so your iPhoto library isn't ever affected when you use Picasa.

The appeal of Picasa 3.5 for iPhoto users is the tight integration with Picasa web albums, esp. with "Faces" and geotagging.

What’s wrong with iPhone OS 3.1? I think it’s the RAM.

With OS 3 I had to restart my iPhone every 2-3 weeks. If I didn’t it got painfully slow and problematic apps like Byline would crash.

With OS 3.1 and the same apps I need to restart every 3 days – or spend minutes between screen updates.

I’m not the only one to have trouble with 3.1 ..

iPhone 3.1 problems flood our tip box

In the last week, we have had a constant barrage of iPhone issues break through the lines... so much so that we feel it is our duty to inform the two of you who haven't updated what you could experience by updating to version 3.1 of the iPhone OS. This is no small problem, as you can read from the discussions on Apple's website here, here, here, and here.

The first two links are where we're getting the majority of our tips -- random shutdowns and very poor battery life. The second two, bricked phones and general slowness are still worth a mention -- even prompting our own Erica Sadun to do a live walk-through for debrickifying iPhones…

In my case it’s most likely that the phone is running out of working memory (RAM), probably due to memory leaks (applications that grab working memory and don’t release it). This is likely much less of a problem for 3GS owners, they have twice the RAM of earlier models …

… the actual specs are fairly widely known…

CPU (central processing unit):

original iPhone: ARM 11, 412 MHz
iPhone 3G: ARM 11, 412 MHz
iPhone 3GS: ARM Cortex, 600 MHz

GPU (graphics processing unit):

original iPhone: PowerVR MBX Lite
iPhone 3G: PowerVR MBX Lite
iPhone 3GS: PowerVR SGX

RAM (random access memory):

original iPhone: 128 MB
iPhone 3G: 128 MB
iPhone 3GS: 256 MB

At a glance, you’ll notice that the RAM in the 3GS doubled from past iPhone models. Twice the amount of RAM than you’ve had is never a bad thing, but the reality here is far more noteworthy… The older iPhone models have been often considered underpowered when it comes to RAM, so even though the RAM amount is technically doubled, in actual use, you’ll often be working with 4x to 10x the amount of free RAM. And that’s one major aspect that’s contributing to the overall speedier feel of the 3GS…

Anyone remember the original Mac? It shipped with two little memory to run the OS. The original iPhone situation wasn’t quite as bad, but it was close. It’s likely that the 3.1 update uses more RAM for the OS than the 3.0 release, and the change has moved 3G and original iPhone users into the red zone.

With older phones all-but-inevitable memory leaks are exhausting available RAM in a day or two of heavy use, bringing the phones to a grinding halt. The problem will only be exacerbated by newer apps that expect more available RAM.

The cruel reality is that older iPhones are coming to the end of the line. I don’t blame Apple for that – but I do blame them for releasing OS 3.1 onto phones that can’t handle it. If Apple can reduce OS memory leaks and RAM footprint they’ll redeem themselves (a bit), but clearly future OS releases won’t run on older iPhones.

Apple will either need to move to the two version model they follow on desktop machines (currently 10.5 and 10.6 are both supported, I think there may even be some 10.4 updating going on) or they’ll have to launch some kind of trade-up program for older phones.

Coming from me this is just speculation, but I’m going to install Memory Status and update my results here.

Update: Memory Status was last updated in Dec 2008, so it’s not a good bet for OS 3. I bought iSystemInfo for $1. Shortly after a restart it reports 23MB free (23/128 or 18% free). After using Byline and exiting I have 21MB free.

Update 2: When I make a phone call there's about 3-4MB free during the call. Also, it turns out I didn't need to buy iSystemInfo. I already own "AppBox Pro", a "swiss army knife" product that's subsuming free standing apps like a "Clinometer (level)", Flashlight, Ruler, System Info, Battery Life, Currency Converter, etc. AppBox Pro is giving me approximately the same results as iSystemInfo. Incidentally, AppBox Pro has the ugliest icons ever seen on an iPhone. It reminds me of my old Palm.

Update 9/17/09: The Register on "buggiest update yet". I suspect the problems mostly hit 3G users.

iTunes 9 home sharing is mediocre

There's a longstanding issue with iTunes, one that I've been writing about since at least 2005.

Suppose you have have 3 family members with iPhones. Do they all sync to one user account? Our do they each sync to their own account?

If the former everyone shares music and apps (up to five devices), but they also share playlists, address books, iTunes accounts, and calendars (unless they sync via Exchange Server to Google). If the latter then everyone has their own stuff, but they also need to have their own movie, music library and app library.

This is a longstanding pain in the butt.

So when I read that iTunes - 9 did something about music sharing decided to install it on a non-media machine.

Turns out, it does what Apple says:

... With Home Sharing, you can browse the iTunes libraries of up to five authorized computers in your house, import what you like...

Emphasis on IMPORT. If you add a tune to a playlist you COPY the file, even when iTunes is running in multiple user sessions on the same machine.

So everything is duplicated.

It's a lot like old-style iTunes sharing, except now you can copy.

Not interesting. The old problem remains.

See also:

• Working around iTunes lack of multi-user support
• Sync iTunes Libraries Between Two Macs
• Sharing an iTunes library between multiple users

Update 9/10/09: A friend tells me he syncs his wife's iPod twice. Once to the account that holds iTunes, a second time to her personal account. The iTunes settings on each machine control what gets synched. This is an intermediate solution with both advantages and obvious disadvantages (double sync, no personal playlist, no personal ratings, etc, etc). Also if you are sharing your iTunes Library the update may reset permissions.

Update 9/24/09: I upgraded my main library to 9.01 and paid more attention to the language of Home Sharing such as "is for personal use". Note that Home Sharing is for all persons who share the same iTunes account -- which is, in theory, only one person. Apple is walking a fine DRM line here, as they have for many years. They don't target multiple accounts on a single Mac because that represents multiple users, and Home Sharing is really for one user on multiple machines.

twitterfeed: tweet the feed

twitterfeed is takes any kind of public feed and turns it into tweets.

It works with OpenID and uses oauth to talk to Twitter, so it passes my initial screening tests. You don't enter your Twitter credentials and you don't have to remember yet another un/pw.

Now all I need is for Google to provide a Google Reader shared-item-with-note feed that would provide the item name/link and my Google Reader Note. I'd be able to use Google Reader to generate tweets with notes on the things I'm interested in.

Alas, we're waiting for Google to take the next step here ...

Life Hacker - living with Google Voice

Great orientation: How to Ease Your Transition to Google Voice - Google Voice - Lifehacker.

It's one thing to get a list of features, another to learn how to make them work. See also Pogue's brief summary.

Google also recommends Tech Crunch on the Android and Blackberry GV apps (alas, not iPhone - cures you Steve Jobs!).

Setting up Google Voice accounts for Google Apps users

I'm a big fan of Google Voice (boo Apple!), it's saved me about saved me about $1,000 over the past year or so. I'm also a fan of Google Apps for our family through which I've reached the nerdvana of unified calendaring.

So as our eldest moves into junior high I decided it was time to get him his lifelong unique identifier phone number. A number that's under my control -- for now.

Getting an 'invite' to participate is easy, Google is handing out GV numbers on demand now (US only). The tricky part is unifying this with his Google Apps family account.

It turns out you can't really do this. Google Voice is tied to a Google account, you can't log in using Google Apps credentials. In the Google World it's fine to have a Google Apps account, but everyone needs a personal Google Account as well (which makes sense if you think about it long and hard enough).

Here's what I did for my Google Apps users who now also have Google Voice numbers:

1. Request the GV number.
2. Click on the link in the GV invite.
3. Don't bother trying to login with your Google Apps credentials. Click new account.
4. For user name provide your Google Apps user name.
5. For password provide your Google Apps password.

With this setup the GV number feels like it's bound to the Google Apps account, but this is a convenient illusion. It's bound to a completely separate Google account that happens to have the same user name as the Google Apps account.

Very slow 10.5.8 updates on some PPC machines

It's been over a month, so I figured I might as well install 10.5.8. Since my photo work now lives on the Intel MacBook, I did the update first on my G5 iMac.

As usual I did a safe boot first to clear out caches and the like. I disconnected my firewire drive then I rebooted. I installed from the Combo Update. I didn't "repair permissions" because, as near as I can tell, that's bogus.

The install proceeded normally until it got to the "2 minute" mark. Then the update appeared to hang. The progress bar was frozen, displaying "Install time remaining: About 2 minutes".

Ok. This is Apple after all. We have to expect things not to work properly. I was only mildly suprised.

Happily, I found a most useful reference while I waited ...

...Apple - Support - Discussions - OS 10.5.8 update failure ...

I'm getting the same thing where the installer is stuck at 2 mins.

BUT.

I know it's doing something.

If you bring up the installer log by going Command - L ... and then select 'Show Errors Only' and change it to 'Show All Logs' you'll see it's writing some metadata into the Receipts folder....

Great tip, I didn't know about the installer log. I'm also seeing leisurely, updates to Receipts folder metadata. (Quite a few entries in the error list too!)

Another response speculates that there's some "code signing" going on. Some PPC updates are said to take hours to complete.

Update pending.

Update: It concluded properly. Here are the final log results ...

Sep 5 21:21:39 BigMac Installer[302]: **** Summary Information ****
Sep 5 21:21:39 BigMac Installer[302]: Operation Elapsed time
Sep 5 21:21:39 BigMac Installer[302]: -----------------------------
Sep 5 21:21:39 BigMac Installer[302]: script 2441.19 seconds
Sep 5 21:21:39 BigMac Installer[302]: zero 0.36 seconds
Sep 5 21:21:39 BigMac Installer[302]: install 2992.16 seconds
Sep 5 21:21:39 BigMac Installer[302]: validate 32.83 seconds
Sep 5 21:21:39 BigMac Installer[302]: os 0.00 seconds
Sep 5 21:21:39 BigMac Installer[302]: extract 464.22 seconds
Sep 5 21:21:39 BigMac Installer[302]: receipt 4.49 seconds
Sep 5 21:21:39 BigMac Installer[302]: disk 1.08 seconds
Sep 5 21:21:39 BigMac Installer[302]: config 49.33 seconds

It took about 90 minutes to complete the update, most of which was spent on those very slow metadata writes.

Here are the results for an Intel MacBook:

Sep 5 23:54:56 Stanford-MacBook-2 Installer[197]: **** Summary Information ****

Sep 5 23:54:56 Stanford-MacBook-2 Installer[197]: Operation Elapsed time

Sep 5 23:54:56 Stanford-MacBook-2 Installer[197]: -----------------------------

Sep 5 23:54:56 Stanford-MacBook-2 Installer[197]: script 381.73 seconds

Sep 5 23:54:56 Stanford-MacBook-2 Installer[197]: zero 0.08 seconds

Sep 5 23:54:56 Stanford-MacBook-2 Installer[197]: install 744.83 seconds

Sep 5 23:54:56 Stanford-MacBook-2 Installer[197]: validate 17.36 seconds

Sep 5 23:54:56 Stanford-MacBook-2 Installer[197]: os 0.00 seconds

Sep 5 23:54:56 Stanford-MacBook-2 Installer[197]: extract 311.78 seconds

Sep 5 23:54:56 Stanford-MacBook-2 Installer[197]: receipt 0.91 seconds

Sep 5 23:54:56 Stanford-MacBook-2 Installer[197]: disk 1.01 seconds

Sep 5 23:54:56 Stanford-MacBook-2 Installer[197]: config 33.04 seconds

On the Intel machine the install took about 20 minutes -- so about 1/4 to 1/5 the time.

Update b: I went to do a scan and my Epson Scan software died. I don't know if this was the update, but I'm suspicious. Epson put out a new version a few days ago that's supposed to cover 10.6 too:

Scanner Driver and EPSON Scan Utility v3.28
Intel-based Macs with OS X (v10.4.4 - v10.6.x), PowerPC Macs with OS X (v10.3.9 - v10.5.x)
epson13224.dmg - 18.6MB - posted on 09/01/09

The installation didn't change my problem, but it resolved away after a reboot. I suspect it was unrelated to the update; I've not used the scanner for a bit.

The new Epson scan utility does cure a few old bugs however.