
Apple’s iPhoto Makes It Way Too Easy To Delete Your Entire Flickr Library - alexandros
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/15/apples-iphoto-makes-it-way-too-easy-to-delete-your-entire-flickr-library/
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thwarted
I wonder how much these kinds of "mistakes" come from trying to create a
paradigm where it looks like there is only one copy of something in a world
where users are already used to the fact that computers are copying machines
by nature (your friends can not technically view your photos unless you upload
them to flickr (provides flickr a copy), and the user downloads them from
flickr (makes a copy to the user)). Similarly, you don't necessarily delete
something off your iPod, you remove it from your iTunes library. The various
players you have for music interface with your iTunes library, they
conceptually don't read individual files (even though they technically do,
that's how disconnected operation currently _has_ to work). The syncing helps
make things appear to have transparent access. You have one address book, the
syncing between discreet devices happens in the background to support the
illusion of a single instance. Time Machine is similar, in that there is a
conceptual presentation that you're looking at the same file at different
points in time, not that there are multiple files each containing different
versions of the same conceptual content (even though it actually needs to
_copy_ a file to make a backup, even if it does some tricks by using hardlinks
and is COW (I don't know the internals of TM)).

Unfortunately, this goes against the majority of computer users' experience.
While that's a good mapping to real-world physical devices, it doesn't work
for things that are stored in distinct files. When I take a picture with my
digital camera, it is stored on the camera. Now I copy it to my computer, and
there are two instances. Now I upload it to flickr, and I still have the other
two copies: I don't _need_ to go to flickr to view the image. Vs address book
entries, which are not usually stored in distinct files and have not
traditionally been moved around and copied like files (UIs that do as an
useful * extension* not withstanding), so the concept of keeping all data in
sync is more natural to users.

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jws
OMG! If you tell your software to remove a photo from flickr, it does! After
first telling you it is doing exactly that and asking for confirmation. All
you have left is the original copy on your computer, which you could just
stick back up on flickr if you wanted to. Oh the humanity.

I look forward to the day when we can have personal source site downmods in
Hacker News.

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GHFigs
Product using interface metaphor A syncs with product using interface metaphor
B. Result: user confusion, user error, user complaints.

