Applepeels

Changes at Applepeels

It has been over six years since I published my first Applepeels.  A lot has changed for me and for Apple over those years.

My career at Apple ended over seven years ago, and there are only a handful of people that I know still working at Apple.  I have no current insider connection at Apple that I am willing to leverage.

Over a year ago, I stopped doing Apple interviews.  It had gotten to the point that the interviewers all had an agenda, and just wanted to see if they could pull something out of me that might support their pet theory.  I am not interested in having my words twisted again as they were in the last interview that I did.

Apple has gone on to be a wildly successful company with many happy users.  They have certainly done it with a vision that few people at the company could imagine in the dark days of the mid-ninties.

I am glad that Apple is still around, because I love choice in hardware and software.

With all that said, it is time for a change.

As of August 12, 2011, I have taken down most of the original Applepeels posts.  There are still a handful of posts there, but you will quickly find that they don't deal with my years at Apple.

I did this for several reasons.  Most importantly, in looking through the content,  I found a lot of dated material, and some of my own writing that no longer fits what I think today.

I felt like it made more sense to take down most of the posts and continue with Applepeels as a site which deals with my life as a current Apple user who has the perspective of someone who used to work at Apple. Editing the over 1,100 pages of content was more of a challenge than I was willing to take.

However, I will continue to write here at Applepeels.

It is impossible for me to the remove perspective that nearly twenty years at Apple gave me, so I am certain that it will always be there in my writing.

I continue to get requests for posts with thoughts about how Apple works, but I will likely try to answer some of those questions in one of the books that I am writing and not on the web.

I appreciate the many comments that came from people reading Applepeels.  I enjoyed some of the lively debates.

There will still be new posts here at Applepeels on Apple and the company's hardware and software, there just won't be an archive with a lot of old posts.

The welcome mat is still out for Apple users who happen to visit North Carolina's Crystal Coast.  If you are in the area give me a call especially if you happen to be looking for a home along the coast.

If you enjoy my style of writing, you can find a list of links to a number of my blogs at this site, there are many topics that I write about besides Apple.

I am very passionate about life at the beach, so if you love the beach and ocean, you might enjoy my beach perspective and pictures even more than my Apple perspective.

Again I want to thank those loyal readers who made Applepeels a lot of fun over the years.  I hope you will hang around to read the next chapters that I write from North Carolina's Southern Outer Banks.

 

One last batch of iPhoto and Picasa tests

I was traveling when I did the recent tests that I published regarding iPhoto 9.1.5 and Picasa.

Returning to North Carolina's Crystal Coast gave me a good chance to run some more tests and include my I5 iMac.

Again I formatted a SDHC device using my Sony camera.  I took 48 pictures.  I tested to see how long it took a computer to recognize the card, automatically launch the photo software and import all the photos.  I configured it so I only had to click once on each system for the import to start. Timing was done with the stopwatch App on my Motorola Droid phone. (Perhaps iPhoto 9.1.5 was protesting the Droid being the timer.)

Here are the results with the fastest system listed first

1. I5 iMac w/Picasa on Snow Leopard, time, < 30 sec.
2. HP I7 laptop w/Picasa on Windows 7, 31 sec.
3. MacBook, w/Picasa on Snow Leopard, 35 sec.
4. I5 iMac w/Photo 8.1.2 on Snow Leopard, 42 sec
5. Dell P3 w/f-Spot 0.8.2 on Ubuntu 11.04 47 sec.
6. I5 iMac w/Aperture 2.1.4 on Snow Leopard  52 sec.
7. MacBook w/iPhoto 9.1.5 on Snow Leopard  84 sec.
8. Dual G5 w/iPhoto 7.1.5 on Mac OSX 10.5.8 118 sec.

It is not unusual for me to import 500 photos in one day so speed in importing photos is important to me.

I have made my decisions on what to use. I will be using Picasa on my MacBook where I cannot go back to the previous version of iPhoto.  I'll continue to use iPhoto on my iMac where I still have iPhoto version 8 libraries.  I hope these tests might be helpful to others.

While it would be interesting to run tests with Lion, I keep getting reports from my more adventurous friends that are keeping me on Snow Leopard.

Here are two sample quotes from friends whose technical opinions I really respect.

"Not having a good Lion experience, it is a dog on my 2006 iMac and my 2009 MBP."

"Lion is not what it is touted to be. As have some others I have found it slower...."

However, this is not a discussion about Lion on which I have zero experience.

Also I realize that there is a newer version of Aperture, but I don't use Aperture nowadays so I'm am not interested in the spending the money for the upgrade.

The interesting question is why Apple would release a product like iPhoto 9.1.5 which is so much slower than the previous version?

I could speculate all day on that, and it would still just be pure speculation.  However, here a few thoughts on the issue.

From 10,000 feet, I still believe this has more to do with Apple trying to get their software more IOS like.

People who read the first post in this series might remember my statement that it took twenty years for Apple to come up with a piece of internally crafted software that I really loved.

Apple has also introduced some other really poorly performing software over the years with iWeb being the best example.  Additionally while I have finally grown to like Pages for certain uses, it has never been fast.

While this might seem out of left field, I believe the explanation can be found in some of my old experiences at Apple.

One of the interesting things about life at Apple is doing executive briefings and trying to get Steve to show up to talk to customers.  I can remember a time when we hauled some enterprise clients out, and Steve showed up and would only talk about iMovie.

Within Apple having Steve's focus is a good news, bad news scenario.  You will get the resources to do something, but it will be done Steve's way or heads will roll. A great breakthrough product like iMovie can result from Steve's focus.

One of the real challenges of a company driven by one person's genius is that even an extraordinary one like Steve has only so much bandwidth.  With very little real decision making power passed down to the troops, products or strategies can languish until Steve happens to turn his laser glance towards them.

I call it the "Keynote Phenomenon."  I believe Keynote has gotten regular upgrades and remained a solid piece of software because Steve uses it regularly.  I would be willing to bet that Steve never used iWeb and I suspect MobileMe services fall into the same category.

I can almost guarantee that if Steve tried to import 500 photos into iPhoto 9.1.5, we would have a fix and perhaps a much more usable piece of software.

If Apple still took the time to have customer advisory boards or to let heavy users test software changes, I suspect iPhoto 9.1.5 would have never gotten out the door.  Maybe Steve doesn't do movies and photos anymore?

Apple has a history of coming up with some really great ideas, but the company sometimes forgets the importance of staying laser focused on what is really important to users because it has so little interaction with users.  I think it is a company weakness, but I doubt it will change because it has been that way for so long.

I am not a huge fan of either Adobe or Microsoft software, but I still reach for Word and Excel at times, and I have been doing that for more than 27 years in the case of Word and almost that long for Excel.  I also still pull Photoshop out once in a while.

Unless Apple can figure out how to give products like iPhoto a life of their own, and Filemaker might be a good example and even role model, iPhoto, introduced in 2002, might not make it much beyond the ten year mark as a tool for those of us who are more than just casual users.

We can always hope that small developers continue creating more great tools like Rapidweaver, Coda, Pixelmator, Nisus Writer, and Shutterbug which I recently used to create a very nice non-flash based slide show that will play on my smartphone.

 

 

The saga of Apple's iPhoto and Google's Picasa with some tests

I got a few interesting comments on my decision to move to Google's Picasa on my MacBook instead of using the newest iPhoto version 9.1.5.

Perhaps the one comment most illustrative of what I like least about the Apple world said that the whole thing was my fault because I had an issue with iPhoto and I couldn't solve the issue.  That is perhaps the best example of Apple thinking that I have seen in a long time.

The same people who think it is my fault because iPhoto 9.1.5 wouldn't run would be the first to rant and rave and blame Microsoft if Microsoft shipped a program which didn't install properly.

Somehow Apple gets a free pass from many of its users no matter what it does.  Unfortunately that just feeds the arrogance that has often been Apple's downfall. However, they have such a big cash cushion now, it is hard to imagine what they would have to do to screw up, but I have been surprised before.

I try to hold Microsoft, Google, and Apple to similar standards.  When they provide software free or otherwise, I expect it to work which includes installing without screwing up my data.

When I have paid money for a piece of software and the company ships me a piece of software to update it, it is reasonable to expect it to work.  I have been around Apple hardware and software for twenty-nine years this month which is the anniversary of my Apple II+ purchase.  September will be the 29th anniversary of the first Apple computer that I sold, so I have seen the good, the great, the bad, and the ugly.

Perhaps what I should have said in my most recent post is that I was a lover of iPhoto until the version that came out last fall, and I was willing to put up with some blemishes, but now I feel like that I have lost a valued tool since it has grown some ugly warts.

In the interest of putting some facts behind my assertion that Picasa is a better piece of software than iPhoto 9.1.5, I decided to once again try to get iPhoto 9.1.5 running.  I tried another repair of the library and actually left that running all night.  In the morning iPhoto was unresponsive so I forced iPhoto to quit and threw the whole iPhoto package in the trash and emptied it.

Next I got out my firewire drive and copied over a small iPhoto library that I was sure had been untouched by the most recent versions of iPhoto. It was around 9 gigs of photos, and I made it the main iPhoto library.

Then from the DVD, I reinstalled iPhoto 9 which came with iLife 11.  Of course I ended up doing all the updates and eventually got to the screen which asked me if I wanted to update the library which I did.  Finally iPhoto 9.1.5 decided to work.

As a bench mark I checked my old dual G5 system downstairs, it has over 50,000 photos in one of several libraries, but of course it is running iPhoto 8.

Having gotten iPhoto 9.1.5 running on my MacBook, I decided to run some tests.  While I tried to make it as fair as possible, Picasa ended up being a little handicapped.   The iPhoto library that I used for the tests has about 2,600 photos in it and came in at a little over 9 gigs.  Picasa because it was managing all the photos on my MacBook which includes several libraries, all my jpeg downloads, and even screen captures had 46,000 photo and over 30 gigs of data.

One of my assertions about the newest versions of iPhoto is that the program is flat out slow. To test that I wanted to see how long it would to take to upload photos.   I have two cameras with me on this trip, my Nikon 3100 and my Sony DSC-HX7V pocket camera.  I formatted both their SDHC cards and drove down to the Roanoke River and then visited a local farmer's market.  From the two spots I got about 50 pictures with each camera and made a couple of movies with the Sony.

When I got back, I set iPhoto to the default Photo application on the MacBook, I did a trial upload of another SDHC card just to check that everything was working.  Then I took one of the SDHC cards from my trip and timed with the stopwatch app on my Droid how long it took for iPhoto to launch and import all the photos on the SDHC card in the USB reader that I plugged into the MacBook.  It took just over 50 seconds to import the 50 photos from the Sony formatted card.

I quit iPhoto and set the default photo application to Picasa, once again did a trial import, and then timed how long it took to launch Picasa and import all fifty photos.  It was less than 30 seconds until completion.

I repeated the tests with HDSC card from my Nikon. It had only 49 photos, but they were larger files.  This time I did Picasa first.  It got the photos from the Nikon formatted card in 35 seconds.  I switched to iPhoto 9.1.5, and it took 53 seconds.

Just out of curiosity, I did the Sony card on my HP I7 laptop.  It took 32 or 33 seconds for the import, but it did take a couple of seconds to click and quit the Sony app that imports my movies.  With that said the times for Picasa were a dead heat on both platforms.

One thing that I did find out in all the changing of settings is that there is a setting in the new iPhoto that allows you go back to using Apple Mail for the default way to email your pictures.  As the next tests show, that is a very good thing.

I set the default picture size to be small and "shared" a photo by email.  With both Picasa and IPhoto set to use Apple Mail, it was a dead heat with both programs coming in at close to 4 seconds.  However, when you change the setting to iPhoto using its own email program and Picasa using Gmail, the results were very different.  Picasa took 3 seconds using Gmail, while iPhoto took 8 seconds using its email program.

Next I tried to run some tests of taking a picture, cropping it, applying an auto enhance, and uploading it from iPhoto to MobileMe Gallery or from Picasa to Picasa web albums.  I thought the tests looked pretty even, then when I tried to quit iPhoto, it told me that it was still updating the gallery.  I gave up trying to come up with a consistent way to see which was faster.   From what I could tell it looked like Picasa took 41 seconds, iPhoto 46 seconds, but again I am not sure iPhoto was finished.

I upload a lot from the iPhoto on my I5 iMac to Picasa web albums.  Of course you have to add something to iPhoto to make that happens since Steve has a holy war going on against Google.  I have long had the perception that it takes much longer to upload from iPhoto on my iMac to Picasa web albums than it does going from Picasa on my Windows I7 laptop to Picasa web albums.

This morning I took the same photo, cropped, auto enhanced, and uploaded to Picasa web albums using the I7 laptop.  It only took 24 seconds seconds and was clearly faster than either program on the MacBook.  Both computers are on the same wireless G class network.  My guess is that the difference was not in the editing but in the uploading.

I tried one more test.  I added some photos to one of the cards I used for the previous day's test and went through the uploading to the library test again except this time, I also tested the Windows laptop using the same external USB reader as I use on the MacBook.  Picasa on the MacBook took 29 seconds to get the photos.  iPhoto on the MacBook took 61 seconds, and the Windows laptop took 50 seconds.  The one caveat is that the way I have the Windows laptop set up, a Sony program launches for an optional import which is what I use for movies so I have to cancel it before Picasa on Windows can do its job.

From my tests I don't think that there is any doubt that Picasa is a faster program on the Mac.  It will remain my choice of a photo program on my MacBook while I will continue to use an earlier version of iPhoto on my iMac for as long as I can get away with it.  I will also continue using Picasa web albums since I believe it is a far better solution for my needs than MobileMe Gallery or its successors.

Your needs might vary, but here are some thoughts beyond speed that have gone into my decision.

Number one, I spent much of the last five years of my nearly twenty years at Apple preaching to enterprise customers that it was a very bad thing to let an application or a vendor hold your data hostage.  The biggest example in the enterprise world is Microsoft Exchange mail which at the time was certainly not standards based.  We preached IMAP which lets you use any standards compliant mail client that you want.

In a certain sense, iPhoto with its libraries also holds your data hostage.  Once you have used a library with a new version of iPhoto there is no turning back.  It there is a problem with the library, you need to have a back-up. I think the iPhoto library is a bad idea.  I like Picasa's method of just finding the jpegs and keeping track of them.  If I have a folder of jpegs, I can take it to a Linux computer, a Mac, or a Windows computer and find something that will look at them just like various email clients will look at an IMAP mail server.  I think we are really fortunate to have a free program like Picasa that to certain extent frees the data in an iPhoto library.  It certainly saved me lots of time when I needed to print some pictures.

What I love with the older versions of iPhoto is that I don't have to do a lot of switching around to get my tasks done.  When I have a batch of photos that need the same adjustments, it is easy to apply those exact same settings. I could click on a photo and click again and be back to the main library. That has all changed in the latest versions whose interface I find dumbed down for lack of a better phrase. iPhoto was a better program than Picasa for editing, but no longer.  It adopted some of the things I don't like about Picasa and added some of its own truly ugly interface changes.

The only thing that I do to my photos is to try to make what I see on the screen look like what I saw when I was taking the picture.  Since I live at the beach and shoot in lots of difficult light, a good auto contrast is worth a lot to me.  Picasa has a very reliable one that works most of the time in a way that gets me close to what eyes and memory caught when I took the picture.  I also like to put a watermark on a photo and sometimes I like to put a frame around it.  Picasa does the watermark easily when I want and with access to Picnik's online services does a better job of framing than what I get using iPhoto and Pixelmator.  I can get the same results with both, it is just easier and faster with the Picasa/Picnik combination as long as you have a fast Internet connection.  I pay $25 a year or so for the enhanced version of Picnik.  I think it is a good value for the money, and certainly a better value than I have gotten out of MobileMe.

Another area where I believe that Picasa is substantially better than iPhoto is the touch up tool.  There are photos where I might want to take a stray branch out of the finished picture.  For many years I would resort to Photoshop for that task, but the touch up tool in Picasa, once you learn how to use it properly, does an exceptional job.  I can't even remember when I have had to resort to Photoshop.  I find that the iPhoto retouch tool does more smudging than anything else.

Another really big point for me is that it is very easy to share a single photo using Picasa web albums. I get the link for sharing, embed it into my blog post, and I am off to the races. I also like that I can choose in Picasa whether to use Gmail or AppleMail to send my pictures by email without going to the preferences.  Of course Picasa syncs automatically to my the photo gallery on my Droid.

I always try to use the best tool for the job.  I have Aperture and have tried Adobe's Lightroom several times, but I don't need their features.  That said, there are days that I take 500 to 1,000 pictures, and it would be a rare day when I don't take fifty or sixty pictures.

I use Nikon, Panasonic, and Sony cameras.  I use Apple, HP, and Dell hardware along with OS X, Windows 7 and Ubuntu Linux.  I have Epson, Canon, and HP printers.

Sometimes a different camera lets me see a scene in a different way, and there are tweaks that are better done in one program or the other.  The results are highly subjective.  I still prefer the editing on the iPhoto 8 that I have on my iMac. Sometimes now I use Picnik with it for watermarking and framing.

Your needs are going to vary from mine, but I have given this a lot of thought, applied some tests, and come to the conclusion that Picasa is far better software for my needs than iPhoto 9.1.5.  All the tests were done on my July 2006 Intel MacBook running Snow Leopard.

This settles the issue for me, I might run some more tests when I get home to my I5 iMac just to see how fast it is importing, but I won't be upgrading to iPhoto 9.1.5 ( or LIon for that matter) since the newer iPhoto just doesn't meet my very demanding needs.

This isn't the first time I have had comments about iPhoto and interface changes.  Share has once again moved.

That said I am probably going to need some more Marsh time after all this thinking about computers.