Apple Releases iPhoto 9.0.1 to Address Data Loss

[Pachang]

Arn there is a fine line between rubbish articles and sensationalist ones. Ok we get it you have to make a living but don't be desperate about it to the detriment of apple. "To address data loss issues" is a rubbish claim, there are no data loss issues, there is a rare bug here, and it's been corrected. So save us the sensationalism and report this as it should be reported. You are taking advantage of common folk here, and scaring them fearing they might lose their data. In all these forums here with thousands of people no one really lost their data irretrievably, so what is this rubbish all about then other than getting people worked up and driving hits here? Get it together cause you are hurting the community, and the community doesn't like you for doing that. Anyone playing games on apple's back is going to get it hard at some point, and you are not going to like it when it happens. You are riding the coattails of apple here, so be a good boy and dont't try to bite the hand that feeds you.

That's an interesting opinion.

On october 20 you had posted four times on macrumors. In ten days you have clocked up 256 posts. That's over 25 posts a day.
Do you think that maybe you have recently become COMPLETELY OBSESSED with Apple to the point of spouting nonsense and critcising arn for being ANTI Apple?

Just another interesting opinoin.

 

[Bodypainter]

10 days after releasing a buggy iphoto version that is full of strange mistakes apple is fixing the import-problem - and nothing else!

just a reminder:

- starting up takes ages
- you rotate, but iphoto "forgets" the rotation (sometimes)
- you search on a specific date, but it doesn't list up the events of the found pictures
- strange patterns appear on the screen when going from fullscreen to normal screen
- VERY SLOW
- NO FULLSCREEN BORDERLESS PHOTOVIEWING
- NO MORE PICS NEXT TO EACH OTHER WITHOUT HUGE EDIT-BAR
- view pictures in a search result and you get stuck (photo -7 of 200!)
- geolocatios get doubled
- geolocations window is small like a stamp (unusable)
- move the pin of a geolocation and it works or works not.
- faces not recognized/destroyed
- no calender printing

etc etc

nothing fixed!

but hey, at least it is not totally destroying your photo library now... apple: high quality products!!!

 

[kntgsp]

That's an interesting opinion.

On october 20 you had posted four times on macrumors. In ten days you have clocked up 256 posts. That's over 25 posts a day.
Do you think that maybe you have recently become COMPLETELY OBSESSED with Apple to the point of spouting nonsense and critcising arn for being ANTI Apple?

Just another interesting opinoin.

I just have to laugh at someone actually accusing Arn of being anti-Apple. That has to be the first time in 6 years of posting here that I've seen it. Arn's goal is to simply be informative and foster a community for discussion (at least that's the way I perceive it).

I really, truly believe that the consumer base Apple has cultivated with their brand loyalty campaigning over the years has created people like bouncer. People so fiercely loyal that any flaw pointed out is taken to be disparaging, hateful remarks about their do-no-wrong savior. I know little of psychology, but doesn't that kind of resemble Stockholm Syndrome? Let alone the eerily ironic comparisons to 1984?

 

[OllyW]

That's an interesting opinion.

On october 20 you had posted four times on macrumors. In ten days you have clocked up 256 posts. That's over 25 posts a day.
Do you think that maybe you have recently become COMPLETELY OBSESSED with Apple to the point of spouting nonsense and critcising arn for being ANTI Apple?

Just another interesting opinoin.

bouncer1 seems to want anyone with opinions that are not pro-Apple to be banned from MacRumors.

 

[wwchris]

No One Has Answered The Big Question For Many Users

So I am going to post it again so maybe somebody with more knowledge than me has been able to find an answer.

Is there any way for me to find out if I have data loss?

I have 20,000 photos in my library. The upgrade seems to have gone fine and I haven't noticed anything missing except some Faces tags (but of course, I haven't looked through all 20,000 photos). Copying my 185 gig iPhoto library Time Capsule Backup is a hours long process. Since I upgraded, i made a fresh time capsule backup on another hard drive (600 gigs, a one day process, I keep this one at my office incase of fire in my home) so I could defrag. I defrgagged my hard drive with idefrag, a process that took almost 2 days to run in which I had no access to my computer. All in all, it took me almost 5 days to get iPhoto safely back up and running. Should I go through all of this again "just in case"? I don't seem to be having any problems at all.

FYI I defragged my HD because my iPhoto library was split into 600 different data bits because it is written and rewritten so much. My photos were also spread everywhere. Since defragging, I would say iPhoto is 3 times faster. I highly recommend this for all IPhoto users, just back up first

 

[Stella]

Its not a consumer maintenance issue.

How many people know about "option+command" in iPhoto?

A good upgrade should be not be affected by file permissions, especially when inside some ones home directory and should be taken accounted for ( File permissions within iPhoto should be seamless and the user not have to worry. ).

How is data loss unforgivable if its a consumer maintenance issue? How ever, hind sight would suggest the installer repair photo permissions as part of the update process would have been a great idea.

That link shows a tip for repairing iPhoto permissions, but it seems to go the long way around it when iPhoto has this built in

Holding option+command when launching iPhoto brings up an option to repair permissions.

 

[Chupa Chupa]

I suspect that Lion will immediately convert every mac into an idiot-proof idevice that can only access approved apps through their app store.

It goes hand in hand with their other crackpot notion to remove optical drives from macs, so that every mac is merely an overpriced tablet.
The days of catering to serious users are long gone.

They no longer compete with companies like Dell or HP. Their main focus of competition is now with companies like Nokia.

Given the way things are headed, I think that my current macs and snow leopard will be the last upgrades that I ever buy from apple.
It's a shame, since they used to be serious contenders.

Serious contenders for what? Smug arrogance-fueled piss fests hosted by you and your elitist pals? It's guys like you that give Apple it's snob label.

1) Just because someone isn't as adept as using a computer as you doen't make them idiots. I know plenty of top notch people, many much smarter than I, that call me in freak out mode b/c they need to install new software and are afraid they are going to push the wrong button.

2) Apple often "idiotically" removes things from computers and pays a dear price. I'm sure you'd agree when they starting removing internal floppy drives it was Apple's spiral downward.

The MBA isn't for me, but it is for a lot of people. It's a good product, a great 2nd computer to travel around with. Maybe you use your optical drive daily. Hourly even. Most people don't. And the recovery USB key Apple supplies is more than most netbooks supply.

3) Go with whatever OS you like. From what you write, you might cotton to some obscure flavor of Linux to make you oh so unique and superior to the rest of us who depend on kindergarten-like GUI menus to get our work done.

4) BTW if you haven't heard the corporate world is overwhelming Apple w/ requests for the simplistic iPad, so much to the point they are getting Ingram-Micro to be the distribution company. So, yeah, I think they are competing quite well with HP & Dell. And Nokia? Hey, I'll take a $99 iPhone to any $99 Nokia anyday. Nokia is outclassed.

 

[Nuvi]

Arn there is a fine line between rubbish articles and sensationalist ones. Ok we get it you have to make a living but don't be desperate about it to the detriment of apple. "To address data loss issues" is a rubbish claim, there are no data loss issues, there is a rare bug here, and it's been corrected. So save us the sensationalism and report this as it should be reported. You are taking advantage of common folk here, and scaring them fearing they might lose their data. In all these forums here with thousands of people no one really lost their data irretrievably, so what is this rubbish all about then other than getting people worked up and driving hits here? Get it together cause you are hurting the community, and the community doesn't like you for doing that. Anyone playing games on apple's back is going to get it hard at some point, and you are not going to like it when it happens. You are riding the coattails of apple here, so be a good boy and dont't try to bite the hand that feeds you.

Stop being such a childish fanboy. Even Apple calls it data loss and they've released an update to address that. Get a grip mate. You're the one "hurting the community". Zealots like you give a bad name to the whole community. Now be a good boy and try thinking like a normal person.

 

[Brinkman]

Lol at people freaking out. Don't drive your car. There have been reports that cars can kill you.

 

[vinyl.warrior]

Is there any way for me to find out if I have data loss?

I don't have as many photos as you do, but I'm wondering the same thing.

When I first tried to launch iPhoto 11, it just hung there, doing nothing. I checked Activity Monitor, and it iPhoto was using 0 CPU. I force quit the app, then relaunched it. Same thing, but this time I waited it out for longer. Eventually, iPhoto came up and upgraded my library.

I haven't noticed any problems, but I haven't thoroughly checked, either. I don't even know what I would be looking for? Are thumbnails there, but the actual photos not? Would whole events have disappeared?

 

[Brinkman]

I wonder how "rare" this bug actually is. For my part, I had no trouble with my upgrade. Everything seems to be working fine and iPhoto is just as speedy as the old version, maybe a bit more speedy. So I wonder what it is about a user's system that would trigger the problems in iPhoto.

No one on this forum reported data loss. Yet they're all flipping out. Ignorance is bliss for this Mac community.

 

[phpmaven]

I wonder how "rare" this bug actually is. For my part, I had no trouble with my upgrade. Everything seems to be working fine and iPhoto is just as speedy as the old version, maybe a bit more speedy. So I wonder what it is about a user's system that would trigger the problems in iPhoto.

Well... I haven't read every post out there mind you, but I get the impression that the vast majority of people that had issues didn't experience actual data loss but were able to reimport or otherwise get all the links to their photos resolved. I've seen a couple of posts where people actually lost data where the size of their library files were dramatically reduced.

 

[ateslik]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_0_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8A306 Safari/6531.22.7)

I'm one of the extremely rare cases of true data loss...an I'm not happy at all.

This update comes 1 week too late for hundreds of work photos I have.

Time capsule you ask? Yep. I have one. Little did I realize that between my wife's and my back ups, the drive is full and deleting all past backup an only saving 1 for each of us. That on I have is one of the already updated, lost/corrupted or whatever iPhoto library in question. I soooo rarely go into time capsule, I do not know how many past backups I have. Believe me, I was shocked when I went in to grab old version and saw only one backup. Last time I looked, there were at least 30.

:insert loud expletive starting with F here:

I will need to be better at upgrading, checkin my back up more religiously, basically become as vigilant as a PC user must be. The loss is unacceptable to me' and the clients whose raw imagery I've now lost in my zeal to update To Apple's newest and "bestest"

I'm frustrated with myself for lack of vigilance and for allowing myself to trust my favorite tools made by my favorite tool maker.

Sooo, where the heck are the tips for actually rescuing/retrieving data? I've tried all option/command restore tips, erasing permissions etc...still enjoy a grey screen with a white spinning hash marked circle.

(sorry for typos, banged out on my iPhone before bed)

The data is still on your hard drive. When a file is deleted the entire existence of the file is not wiped away, only the part that tells the system there is a file here on the disk and it is this many bytes. The "this many bytes" is still intact.

Immediately stop using your drive because now the file bits are exposed and can be overwritten. Boot knoppix, dd a disk image, and extract the images with foremost. Its laborious, but the images will be there.

 

[moe-jiller]

Places - tags

My data loss was about 2/3 of my 'Manual' Places tags. The Places tags from my GPS made the conversion fine. About 2/3 of the Places locations / tags that I input manually were lost in the conversion process. Now that I applied the patch I will call Apple care to see if I can recover the (about 2,000) lost tags.

 

[manu chao]

When you buy iLife '11, and you get iPhoto installed, it's installing 9.0.0, right? Only after that's installed, and has replaced the previous iPhoto, the update occurs in Software Update to bring it to the most recent version - now 9.0.1.

Wouldn't a problem like transitioning to the new iPhoto still exist? That install disc still has the problematic 9.0.0 version, which could potentially still lose data before you get the chance to update, even if you do it right after you install it.

The iPhoto app will not touch your existing iPhoto library until you start the app (and click a confirm button to let it modify your existing library).

 

[Macsterguy]

iPhoto 11 / MobilMe Gallery (sync) problems...

I do have backups...
I did apply the patch before even opening iPhoto...

OK, so I updated one of 3 Macs to iPhoto 11 (including the recent patch, before ever launching iPhoto). Everything went smoothly... Until the Mac with iPhoto 11 began syncing with MobileMe Gallery... Now, my MobileMe Gallery has duplicates of every photo (1000's of them)... The local iPhoto libraries on all 3 Mac's (2 - iPhoto 09 and 1 - iPhoto 11) appear to be fine...

IF I WERE A BETTING MAN... I would expect that when I update the other 2 Macs to iPhoto 11 the problem will be worse with 1000's and 1000's of duplicates of all photos...

OR, EVERYTHING WILL BE OK and everything will sync back up...

Any thoughts (or takers) on this outcome?

 

[bankshot]

I think that's massively overstating it. It's not clear this was a permissions issue anyway — it's just what someone on Mac OS X Hints claims.

It's a horrific bug, but it doesn't mean the iPhoto team are idiots. It does mean, though, that they didn't properly handle some edge-case in the upgrade code, and didn't properly test it.

You're right - the data loss may not have been directly a permissions issue, but the Mac OS X Hints article does claim that "fixing" permissions avoids the problem. So it's probably involved.

My bigger issue with all of this was the revelation that iPhoto's "repair permissions" option opens up the entire world (any account on your computer, including Guest) to have read and write permissions in the photo library. It really makes me scratch my head. Were they just lazy / asleep when they programmed this repair function? Did they actually design iPhoto to require such open permissions? If so, that's just horrible design. No user account other than the owner should ever need any type of access to the files.

For my part, after experimenting and verifying that iPhoto '09 does indeed open up permissions completely when you do a "repair" operation, I went back and removed write permission for all but myself. So far, iPhoto runs just fine that way. And I'd kind of expect it to, since all new photos imported since I upgraded to '09 (~18 months ago) already had these permissions. It was only earlier photos that had write permission for all.

Thinking about it some more, I suspect an old version of iPhoto defaulted to world-writable permissions, and the repair function hasn't been updated since then. Whether that was ever truly necessary, or just a "mistake" we'll never know. But in either case, it was atrocious software design that should never have made it out of internal peer review at Apple.

That's all I'm saying...

 

[Luis Ortega]

Serious contenders for what? Smug arrogance-fueled piss fests hosted by you and your elitist pals? It's guys like you that give Apple it's snob label.

1) Just because someone isn't as adept as using a computer as you doen't make them idiots. I know plenty of top notch people, many much smarter than I, that call me in freak out mode b/c they need to install new software and are afraid they are going to push the wrong button.

2) Apple often "idiotically" removes things from computers and pays a dear price. I'm sure you'd agree when they starting removing internal floppy drives it was Apple's spiral downward.

The MBA isn't for me, but it is for a lot of people. It's a good product, a great 2nd computer to travel around with. Maybe you use your optical drive daily. Hourly even. Most people don't. And the recovery USB key Apple supplies is more than most netbooks supply.

3) Go with whatever OS you like. From what you write, you might cotton to some obscure flavor of Linux to make you oh so unique and superior to the rest of us who depend on kindergarten-like GUI menus to get our work done.

4) BTW if you haven't heard the corporate world is overwhelming Apple w/ requests for the simplistic iPad, so much to the point they are getting Ingram-Micro to be the distribution company. So, yeah, I think they are competing quite well with HP & Dell. And Nokia? Hey, I'll take a $99 iPhone to any $99 Nokia anyday. Nokia is outclassed.

Nice rant, mr. fanboy. Meanwhile Nokia outsells the iphone by 2 to 1.
The fact is that apple has abandoned the serious computer market to become an idevice company.
The ipad is a silly joke right now, and you will see it add more inputs in the future because it has to compete in the real world.
Meanwhile, they will strip the macbooks down to nothing more than a glorified ipad so that eventually anyone using an apple product will be tied to the app store, and their freedom of choice will be reduced to whatever apple deems worthy.
Excuse me if I don't feel like drinking that koolaid.

 

[Mal]

I have a few questions....

#1 - What if I am using iPhoto '08 (version 7.1.5)? Can I update to iPhoto 11 without having iPhoto '09??? I haven't purchased any other versions of iPhoto since 2008 so what do I do?

#2 - Do I install iPhoto '11 first and then download and install the new update that was release tonight?

#3 - Do I repair permissions after or before I download everything?

Since no one has (directly) answered your questions yet:

#1 - Yes, you can jump straight to '11. All of the iLife updates have worked this way, because they're selling the full version of the software and not just patching what you've got. Most software works this way.

#2 - Yes, that would be recommended. Perhaps not necessary, but it'd be safer to do so anyways. A backup would also be highly recommended (as with any other time you install something, or even if you don't).

#3 - Not necessary, but it also can't hurt anything. Repairing permissions doesn't touch your user folder, which is apparently where the problem lies. It's a permissions issue, but not the type that the repair permissions functionality in Disk Utility and other apps is designed to fix.

jW

 

[cppguy]

Time capsule you ask? Yep. I have one. Little did I realize that between my wife's and my back ups, the drive is full and deleting all past backup an only saving 1 for each of us.

1. The reliability of your service doesn't depend on your backups, but on your ability to do a full restore. If you've never done that, assume that something may be wrong with your backups. Read http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/12/14.html .

2. A good time to do a backup is when you import your photos. I always import two copies, one on my hard drive, and one on a mirrored external drive (a Guardian Maximus). I only put photos, books and software I purchased, and other irreplaceable work related materials. I always keep that drive off when I'm not using it. There's still a danger that in case of a house break-in or fire I'd lose everything. Therefore an online backup service is also recommended. You should also back up your original and post-processed photos separately. Hard drives are really inexpensive these days.

3. Time machine is usually OK, unless it gets full. It doesn't have infinite history, though. I'm a software engineer, and I always use version control, which guarantees the full history, even 15 years of history. I don't recommend that for photos, but it's great for text documents. For photos I just make sure I have the original capture on at least 2 hard drives that aren't running 24/7.

4. On top of that, periodically make a SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner backup of your system drive. I always do that before installing major software. No matter what happens, you can even boot from the cloned drive.

The most reliable drives are the mirrored ones, but it's a lot cheaper to use cheap bare 1TB SATA drives with a USB/FW enclosure. But remember that your computer and backup drives will be stolen first in case of a burglary.

 

[twoodcc]

glad this update is out. i didn't have the data lose program, but i'll install this update anyways

 

[gomobile]

installed no problem so far. no missing photos

 

[arosania]

Wtf?

Nice rant, mr. fanboy. Meanwhile Nokia outsells the iphone by 2 to 1.
The fact is that apple has abandoned the serious computer market to become an idevice company.
The ipad is a silly joke right now, and you will see it add more inputs in the future because it has to compete in the real world.
Meanwhile, they will strip the macbooks down to nothing more than a glorified ipad so that eventually anyone using an apple product will be tied to the app store, and their freedom of choice will be reduced to whatever apple deems worthy.
Excuse me if I don't feel like drinking that koolaid.

"Meanwhile Nokia outsells the iphone by 2 to 1." Yeah, right. Nokia has 70+ models vs. Apple with just 2 models.

"The fact is that apple has abandoned the serious computer market to become an idevice company." When was the last time you benchmarked an Apple versus your (clearly loved) HPs and Dells? I did it yesterday. My LAST YEAR MBP (Core 2 Duo) ranks equal than a HP, a Dell and a Lenovo ThinkPad (from this year, the three PCs with Intel's i5). Nice try.

"The ipad is a silly joke right now"... It surely doesn't sell as a joke. I wish I could gain that money by joking. BTW, your "real world" is already churning out iPad-like devices. Get out of under that rock you live in.

"Meanwhile, they will strip the macbooks down to nothing more than a glorified ipad..." Are you the time traveler from Chaplin's 1928 film? Nice to meet you! How is time traveling and what more can we expect in the future?

"Excuse me if I don't feel like drinking that koolaid". There's the Kool-Aid phrase again. How original. Makes me wonder if the people who use it knows where it comes from. Anyway, I think you already drank other things (in excess).

On Topic: Hadn't had the issue (iPhoto Library of 39.2 GB). Installed the update anyway. Will report if anything happens.

Peace, Out.

 

[thegreatcurve]

My bigger issue with all of this was the revelation that iPhoto's "repair permissions" option opens up the entire world (any account on your computer, including Guest) to have read and write permissions in the photo library.

In practice, that doesn't happen. By default, your data folders—i.e. Documents, Pictures, Music—have permissions such that no other user can see their contents, so the iPhoto Library is off limits even if it is world-writeable.

 

[kernkraft]

Is anybody doing any testing at Apple anymore?

I learnt not to upgrade any software release for several upgrades. This shouldn't be the case.