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.

 

 

Comments

[Dave M.]

Not sure if this is accurate or not, but isn't this test just a test to see how fast x number of photo's can be pulled from a memory card onto a hard drive?

Picasa shows pictures stored on a hard drive, scanning the drive for new images as it runs. iPhoto imports images off the memory card and stores them in a special folder of pictures so that the full library of images appear to be in one file.

Either way, they are stored on the hard drive. So the question of speed breaks down to how fast the computer can pull the images off the card and store them to the hard drive.

Actually, an interesting test of speed would be to do the import manually. Copying the images off the Memory Card to a folder on your hard drive without Picasa or iPhoto. Just to see a baseline as it were.

As for your last paragraph. iPhoto, and Picasa for that matter, do way more than just keep pictures. They allow you to filter them via Face, and location. Slightly more useful than thumbnails in Finder/Explorer.

[ocracokewaves]

Actually, I configured the test so that the hard drive did not have the photos on it before Picasa started so it had to import the photos to the hard just like iPhoto. I also deleted photos between tests when iPhoto ran first.

The test shows how fast the application boots, and imports the photos. There are lots of other things the programs do obviously. I mentioned some of those in the other posts.

Unfortunately the other tests also show the latest iPhoto to be slow in more than just importing. I did the tests to confirm my perception that the latest iPhoto is one slow piece of software compared to previous versions.

[Dave M.]

I figured that you did all the correct things to do an accurate comparison. I just realized as I was typing the comment that both are basically "move images from image card to hard drive" imports.

Trust me, I'm no supporter of iPhoto. I find it intolerably slow starting and imports always show up at the top of the Events screen making me drag them all the way to the bottom of the list of events. Even thought the dates are set correctly. I have yet to figure out why this happens.

However, I do like the "Look and Feel" of iPhoto over Picasa. Apple always seems to do such a great job in that department. I just wish they did a better job with code optimizations so that the programs ran smoother. At least on older machines like my poor Mac Pro (Aug. 2006). :)

I basically use Picasa so I don't have to put the Astronomy Picture of the Day images I collect into my iPhoto library. Picasa allows me to see the collection a little easier than Finder thumbnails.

[John Davis]

Whereas I can see that there are things to improve about iPhoto, I could never use Picasa. I downloaded it and tried it, but the interface is ghastly.

I'm sure that after spending a day or so with "Picasa for Dummies" it would be as putty in my hands, but the clincher for me is iCloud. I'd bet any money that Picasa will not be supported and I know iPhoto will.

[ocracokewaves]

Well we are are all different, but as far as I am concerned, the interface on the most recent iPhoto is "iPhoto for Dummies."

Picasa's interface is consistent, works well, is easy to figure out and they've haven't moved interface elements around like Apple does. You could write a book on how the export function has moved around on iPhoto.

In addition Picasa works well on Windows and Macintosh (as long as you an Intel processor).

As for not being supported, you should first worry about your photos. I have been using .Mac and MobileMe since they started. I have multiple albums over the years that I have trusted to Apple's current "cloud."

At least twice Apple has stopped supporting whatever slide show that they have required us to use for the web.

The most recent episode of that left me pictures whose names are unrecognizable numbers so I have to download them to figure out what they are.

Apple's suggestion is that just upload them from the original machine or iPhoto library. That's is perhaps the most dumb suggestion I have seen in a long time since who keeps a computer more than three or four years?

You put photos on the web so you don't have to worry about which computer or where they are on a hard drive.

The other Apple suggestion is to download them to a new album, rename them and re-upload them.

Well I followed part of their suggestion. I downloaded them, but when I uploaded, I put them on Picasa Web Albums which works better to start with and doesn't mess up my photo names.

I no longer trust Apple with my photos or any online data, and I don't see how their spots are going to change in this next iteration of the cloud.

Apple has never understood publishing on the web. It will be interesting to see how easy iCloud is to use from multiple machines or platforms.

[Dave M.]

Also, with Apple's iCloud, there is no real photo storage. You simply have 1 month to pull images stored in Apple's iCloud before they get removed from online storage. It's strictly for syncing images from your iPhone to your computer.

Picasa Web Albums do not go away after a period of time. I have albums that have been there since 2006 and I didn't have to do anything to keep them there.

Sure, Picasa has a weird interface, but one can get used to it and as ocracokewaves mentioned, it hasn't changed pretty much since it was released.

I still use both iPhoto and Picasa since the only way to get images into an iOS device is with iPhoto. However, for storing images in the cloud, it's Picasa all the way!