

iPhoto 11 upgrade problems - aeontech
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=12476421
Erratic reception problems? An inconvenience, at most. Irrecoverably losing hundreds of gigabytes of your users' irreplaceable photos? That's way, way worse.
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thought_alarm
Nice headline. Digg may be dying, but its spirit clearly lives on.

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aeontech
Heh, I'm a newbie submitter, request forgiveness. It just struck me that this
is a much worse problem in terms of user impact than any problems with
antenna, I suppose I overdid it with the headline. It won't let me edit it any
more, otherwise I'd try to fix it.

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protomyth
All mine went fine. This actually was the least problematic upgrade of iPhoto
so far. Is there some time thing on this or is it happen/doesn't happen?

// what's with the very un-HN headline?

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jsz0
I had no problems with iPhoto 11 but historically iPhoto upgrades have been
hit or miss for some so it doesn't really surprise me. Hopefully people will
learn to backup someday. You just can't trust any software with your data. I'm
not sure Apple is any better or worse at this than others but you might as
well assume they do zero testing and your data is just a big joke to them. If
everything works you're pleasantly surprised. If it catches on fire you have
nothing to worry about.

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rbanffy
Why would iPhoto keep the photos themselves in any other format than the
original files and just point to them from the metadata store? The most I
would to with the files would be to compress them using some lossless
(obviously) algorithm, keeping the filenames and formats... This way, the
worst that could happen would be metadata corruption for the new version's
metadata with preservation of the original information.

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ddelony
A software program having a bug is news?

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solutionyogi
And as expected, Mr. Gruber downplays this terrible, terrible bug.

<http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/10/25/castro-iphone>

If Microsoft (or Adobe) released an update to the software which wiped out
data as precious as your personal photos, I am sure he would not talk about
backups, but thrash the company.

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tptacek
Seriously, you can't take a Mac advocate's casual blog post, _post it here
yourself_ , and then argue that it isn't fair and balanced enough. It is not
Jon Gruber's job to shout from the rooftops when things go wrong with Apple
products.

And chances are, if it is a real problem, there will be a starred long-form
blog post forthcoming from Gruber describing it in more detail.

This is among the more tiresome recurring complaints on HN. "Gruber is
biased". Shocking! Next you'll tell me John Nack really isn't critical enough
about Adobe! Can we give this a rest?

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thegreatcurve
_It is not Jon Gruber's job to shout from the rooftops when things go wrong
with Apple products._

No, it's not, but given the influence that his blog has, being widely read
both inside and outside Apple, it's a real shame that he doesn't. It would be
a wonderful thing if he held Apple to account more often.

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tptacek
This makes no sense to me. He practically started the blog to write glowing
things about Apple. He has the influence has has because he is an extremely
good writer; he's tight, pithy, is relentlessly creative, and has a unique
voice; he's also very well-sourced, which sets up a virtuous cycle for him. He
didn't get his donation as a line item grant from the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting and he doesn't owe us anything.

I actually don't agree with the narrative that Gruber is a shill, but even if
we stipulate that he is to avoid an unproductive argument: so what?

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ZeroGravitas
I've read Gruber for years, and it used to be a mix of "interesting stuff in
the Apple world", "Kubrick/Baseball/BBedit/Applescript/typography nits" and
"criticisms of Apple" (usually centred around lack of attention to detail,
interface annoyances or not being faithful to the pre-OS X way of doing
things).

As an Apple owner and fan, I enjoyed reading those intelligent criticisms.
Clearly this has changed, but lets not go rewriting history.

The last line of his first blog post:

 _"But if it’s the latter — that is, if pro users are giving the finger to Mac
OS X — things could get ugly."_

I wonder why he felt more able to criticize them when they were "beleaguered"
than now, when they're on top of the world. Possibly it's no more than being a
crotchety OS 9 user thrust into the strange and uncomfortable world of early
OS X. Some evidence of that here:

<http://daringfireball.net/2002/09/welcome_indeed>

On the other hand maybe he's checked his stats and found that trolling pays
better.

And just for fun here's some claim chowder from one of his early posts:

 _"a vaporware Apple-branded mobile “iPhone” is getting a lot traction. Go
ahead and read it, but remember that it’s all bullshit speculation at this
point."_

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tptacek
He said that in _2002_.

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ZeroGravitas
That was a merely an amusing-in-hindsight observation, I even telegraphed it
with the introduction of "just for fun".

Maybe the tipsters were right and there was a skunkworks project working on
the iPhone even then (Jobs says the iPhone grew out of iPad work that must
have been going on for years before we saw the iPhone, never mind the iPad) or
alternatively maybe Apple picked up the name for their product from the
rumours. Either way I find it interesting, and it underscores the old adage
that making predictions is a mug's game.

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semipermeable
I hardly think it's worse than antennagate. The iPhone's antenna issues caused
so much of a stir because they impact the basic usage of the device. Is iPhoto
such a core piece of MacOS functionality that this bug will make people stop
buying Macs?

Then again, the timing along with the iPhone screen lock bug could have been
better...

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fletchowns
How is taking pictures and saving them on a computer not a core piece of how a
lot of mac users use their computers? Not to mention losing precious data like
personal photos that cannot be replaced is far worse than a dropped call.

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there
_in other news, apple reported record sales of its time capsule automated
backup devices this week..._

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aeontech
Maybe if time capsule actually went back in time...

