iPhoto ’11 sucks.

[jacg]

Phew. Successfully downgraded to iPhoto 09. Can't believe I had to do this. Unfortunately I can't see many of our grumbles being addressed in a future release. Smoothness perhaps, but not all the pulled features.

 

[JeannieE]

Omigosh! I am SO glad I checked MacRumors about iPhoto 11 today. I bought a new MacBook Pro on September 27, 2010. It was loaded with iPhoto 9. Then iPhoto 11 was released in October. I was really upset when I found out that the window for getting a free upgrade to iPhoto 11 on a "new" computer like mine, was Oct. 1-19. I was 3 (THREE) days too early in buying my $2,000 computer!!! The "Keep Up to Date" offer is less than 3 weeks on a.....let me repeat.....$2,000 computer!!!

Now I feel blessed, thanks to you great people. I have figured out most of iPhoto 9 and, for the most part, am very pleased with the things it does. So I will keep it and not pursue the upgrade which sounds like it has a lot of poor operations and changes.

Wow! You are great to share all your problems to help us out!

Thanks!

 

[kingtj]

I know the feeling, but ...

IMHO, we may see a shift back towards OS X here in the near future. Apple has been heavily distracted trying to get their iOS devices all up to date and in sync with each other. (It's pretty crazy the iPad is *still* not even officially on iOS 4, this long after the iPhone has had it! But that's finally about to end.)

I'm willing to give Apple a chance to redeem themselves on the computing side. I remember previous versions of iLife (like back in '04) that were WAY buggy until several patches were released. So it's not unprecedented. Let's see how they do with this stuff over the next year before we write them off as "the iOS company that USED to do computers right".

I became an Apple convert back in mid-2007. I loved everything about my Macbook back then. OS X Tiger was beautifully done. iLife '07 worked well. I paid a premium for hardware, and I got top notch hardware that was all I could have wanted.

I upgraded to Leopard, and then Snow Leopard. I upgraded to iLife '08, the iLife '09. I was thrilled with all of those upgrades.

I loved my Mac and got several people to convert to Macs.

Now, this past year, Apple really seems to be slipping, releasing upgrades that are alpha-like, not staying on top of the hardware game, and overall losing direction with the Mac line up.

It's sad, because I don't really see another company that directly competes with Apple.

 

[henryhsu]

Agree 110%

I just wanted to post a message agreeing with this thread, for anyone who might be Googling.

I won't repeat all the above complaints, but in sum, it is true: iPhoto '11 is a major step backwards from a practical usability standpoint than iPhoto '09.

Please join me in a moment of silence as I spend the next two hours of my life restoring from an old backup and figuring out how to downgrade cleanly.

Sadly disappointed.

Love,
Frustrated owner of 5 Macs (i.e., not a newbie complaint)

 

[ToddJ]

Phew. Successfully downgraded to iPhoto 09. Can't believe I had to do this. Unfortunately I can't see many of our grumbles being addressed in a future release. Smoothness perhaps, but not all the pulled features.

How were you able to do it? When i reinstalled iPhoto '09, it keeps saying "You can’t open your current photo library using this version of iPhoto. You have made changes to your photo library using a newer version of iPhoto. Please quit and use the latest version of iPhoto"

 

[me_94501]

How were you able to do it? When i reinstalled iPhoto '09, it keeps saying "You can’t open your current photo library using this version of iPhoto. You have made changes to your photo library using a newer version of iPhoto. Please quit and use the latest version of iPhoto"

Here's what I did when I downgraded (aka the hard way, since I didn't have a recent backup):

1. I copied the entire contents of iPhoto library to a folder on my desktop (select all photos, drag to a folder). I also kept my iPhoto '11 library, just in case something went wrong. (To play it safe, make a backup of your iPhoto '11 library.)
2. I restored iPhoto '09 from my last Time Machine backup. I selected the option to keep both versions of iPhoto, just in case.
3. I opened iPhoto '09 while holding down the option key--this brings up a dialog box that asks you to choose an iPhoto Library, and gives you an option to create a new iPhoto library. I created a new library.
4. I dragged the photos I had backed up the the folder on my desktop into iPhoto '09.

I then deleted iPhoto '11 and its library once I was sure that you didn't lose anything in the transfer (i.e. about a month). If you do this, be extra careful that you don't delete the iPhoto '09 library.

This method means that I lost all my events, albums, projects, etc..., but for me, it was worth the extra effort.

 

[jacg]

How were you able to do it? When i reinstalled iPhoto '09, it keeps saying "You can’t open your current photo library using this version of iPhoto. You have made changes to your photo library using a newer version of iPhoto. Please quit and use the latest version of iPhoto"

I had a very recent Time Machine backup of my iPhoto 09 library so I went back to that and reimported a few photos that I had missed in between.

 

[reb271]

couldn't agree more

Since I "upgraded" I have lost 60% of my photo library. I get a message that says "The photo “IMG_0021.jpg” could not be opened, because the original item cannot be found."
I was using iPhoto with NO problems before I upgraded to iLife 11. Does anyone know of any way to retrieve my "lost" photo's. I've been doing screen shots after moving over the lost message, but there are thousands of photo's to do this to and it's a hassle that I don't thing I should have to go through. Thanks


Yes, it’s a rant, but it really, really does suck. Hear me out.

Yesterday, I upgraded to iPhoto ‘11. After half an hour installing the iLife ’11 suite, I launched iPhoto, which spent the best part of the next hour “upgrading” the library to the iPhoto ’11 format. And once it was done, it spent another 10 minutes in a peculiar, frozen state before returning control to me.

But, lets start off with the positives – there are a number of good things about iPhoto ‘11. The new interface is pretty, Apple simplified iPhoto by replacing the mish-mash of interfaces in previous versions with a series of activity panes – Info, Edit, Create, Add To, Share; and gorgeous full-screen views that make full-screen actually useful. My favourite has to be the new Info pane – geotagging photos or adding faces can now easily be accessed via the info pane. Unfortunately, that’s about it...

First of all, iPhoto ’11 is incredibly slow. Okay, the performance of Places and Faces is better than iPhoto ’09 – though clicking on a location or face still sends iPhoto into another spinning beach ball frenzy, with no escape; but the thought of waiting ages and ages just to watch a slideshow, make a card, or make a book simply means that it isn’t something I’d do very often.

And yes, I am running iPhoto on a pokey 2006-era Core Duo MacBook Pro, with just 2 GB of RAM; and yes, I do have some 55,000 photos (37 GB) in the Photo Library. But that’s no excuse for the poor performance of iPhoto – if iTunes can successfully manage 15 days (40 GB) of music plus another 13 GB of films (and then some) without grinding to a complete halt, why can’t iPhoto?

With iPhoto ’09, Apple modified iPhoto so that what you saw in iPhoto no longer matched the underlying folder structure. For example, if you renamed an event from say, “Summer Holidays” to “Summer Fun”, it would still be called “Summer Holidays” when you looked at the underlying folder structure in Finder. With iPhoto ’11, Apple has gone one step further – photos imported won’t even retain their original folder name, and instead, Apple would file these folders inside by the date and time that it was imported. So, if you imported your “Summer Holidays” folder on the 22nd of October 2010, your Summer Holidays photos will show up in ~/Pictures/iPhoto Library/Masters/2010/10/22/20101022-195210/ –– it hardly makes sense!

Of course, some argue that end users would never see this – and allow iPhoto to do whatever it wants – but that’s missing the point: It’s all right and well when iPhoto works correctly, but when the database becomes corrupted, users will lose data. And I’m speaking from experience here – with the upgrade from iPhoto ’09 to iPhoto ’11, the import was completed successfully, but I nevertheless lost around 20 “smart albums” nestled in folders created in iPhoto ’09 with no error messages whatsoever. I had to recreate them from scratch.

Again, a comparison with iTunes can be made. In iTunes, if a user selected “Keep iTunes Media folder organised”, iTunes would ensure that any song will be stored in ~/Music/iTunes Media/Music/Artist/Album/Song.m4a – and if you renamed the artist name, the underlying folder structure would be modified accordingly. Why can’t iPhoto do the same?

It’s one thing to make things simple for end users – but another thing totally to make things “appear” simple to end users, but is a convoluted mess in the background. And that’s what iPhoto has become.

I really want to like iPhoto – I’m still using iPhoto mainly because of the integration with iOS – I like how Faces and Places on iPhoto show up on my iPhone, and no competitors come close to this. And, iPhoto remains better than the competitors: Windows Live Photo Gallery under Windows 7 is probably a close second, but the latest (2011) version can’t read my networked library in VMWare Fusion; while Picasa looks more and more dated, despite the addition of features like Places and Faces. However, unless Apple sorts out iPhoto by making it MUCH faster, and ideally, a sensible underlying folder structure (a complete re-write for iPhoto ’12, anyone?), I find it hard to recommend iPhoto.

(I’m really enjoying iMovie ’11 and GarageBand ’11, and would recommend them as an upgrade…)[/QUOTE]

 

[kingtj]

Completely agree with your opinion here!

Excellent summary of the new iPhoto '11, IMHO.

To Apple's credit though, they DID release a patch to address the issue of data loss when upgrading from an older iPhoto to '11. Problem is, lots of people did the upgrade before the patch was released, or before they realized it should have been downloaded/installed!

The bigger issue is very true though; iTunes organizes your music into a very sensible/friendly folder structure (which they've done nothing but improve on in newer releases, finally putting things that aren't really music into sub-folders that correspond with what they are, like iPhone apps or videos). Meanwhile, iPhoto seems to just make its underlying structure an increasingly confusing mess. (Sometimes I wonder if this is intentional on Apple's part, out of fear people would bypass iPhoto and start using competitor's products to work with the libraries they've imported and collected up? After all, a product like Google's Picasa works best when pointed at a well-kept set of descriptive file folders.)

Since I "upgraded" I have lost 60% of my photo library. I get a message that says "The photo “IMG_0021.jpg” could not be opened, because the original item cannot be found."
I was using iPhoto with NO problems before I upgraded to iLife 11. Does anyone know of any way to retrieve my "lost" photo's. I've been doing screen shots after moving over the lost message, but there are thousands of photo's to do this to and it's a hassle that I don't thing I should have to go through. Thanks


Yes, it’s a rant, but it really, really does suck. Hear me out.

Yesterday, I upgraded to iPhoto ‘11. After half an hour installing the iLife ’11 suite, I launched iPhoto, which spent the best part of the next hour “upgrading” the library to the iPhoto ’11 format. And once it was done, it spent another 10 minutes in a peculiar, frozen state before returning control to me.

But, lets start off with the positives – there are a number of good things about iPhoto ‘11. The new interface is pretty, Apple simplified iPhoto by replacing the mish-mash of interfaces in previous versions with a series of activity panes – Info, Edit, Create, Add To, Share; and gorgeous full-screen views that make full-screen actually useful. My favourite has to be the new Info pane – geotagging photos or adding faces can now easily be accessed via the info pane. Unfortunately, that’s about it...

First of all, iPhoto ’11 is incredibly slow. Okay, the performance of Places and Faces is better than iPhoto ’09 – though clicking on a location or face still sends iPhoto into another spinning beach ball frenzy, with no escape; but the thought of waiting ages and ages just to watch a slideshow, make a card, or make a book simply means that it isn’t something I’d do very often.

And yes, I am running iPhoto on a pokey 2006-era Core Duo MacBook Pro, with just 2 GB of RAM; and yes, I do have some 55,000 photos (37 GB) in the Photo Library. But that’s no excuse for the poor performance of iPhoto – if iTunes can successfully manage 15 days (40 GB) of music plus another 13 GB of films (and then some) without grinding to a complete halt, why can’t iPhoto?

With iPhoto ’09, Apple modified iPhoto so that what you saw in iPhoto no longer matched the underlying folder structure. For example, if you renamed an event from say, “Summer Holidays” to “Summer Fun”, it would still be called “Summer Holidays” when you looked at the underlying folder structure in Finder. With iPhoto ’11, Apple has gone one step further – photos imported won’t even retain their original folder name, and instead, Apple would file these folders inside by the date and time that it was imported. So, if you imported your “Summer Holidays” folder on the 22nd of October 2010, your Summer Holidays photos will show up in ~/Pictures/iPhoto Library/Masters/2010/10/22/20101022-195210/ –– it hardly makes sense!

Of course, some argue that end users would never see this – and allow iPhoto to do whatever it wants – but that’s missing the point: It’s all right and well when iPhoto works correctly, but when the database becomes corrupted, users will lose data. And I’m speaking from experience here – with the upgrade from iPhoto ’09 to iPhoto ’11, the import was completed successfully, but I nevertheless lost around 20 “smart albums” nestled in folders created in iPhoto ’09 with no error messages whatsoever. I had to recreate them from scratch.

Again, a comparison with iTunes can be made. In iTunes, if a user selected “Keep iTunes Media folder organised”, iTunes would ensure that any song will be stored in ~/Music/iTunes Media/Music/Artist/Album/Song.m4a – and if you renamed the artist name, the underlying folder structure would be modified accordingly. Why can’t iPhoto do the same?

It’s one thing to make things simple for end users – but another thing totally to make things “appear” simple to end users, but is a convoluted mess in the background. And that’s what iPhoto has become.

I really want to like iPhoto – I’m still using iPhoto mainly because of the integration with iOS – I like how Faces and Places on iPhoto show up on my iPhone, and no competitors come close to this. And, iPhoto remains better than the competitors: Windows Live Photo Gallery under Windows 7 is probably a close second, but the latest (2011) version can’t read my networked library in VMWare Fusion; while Picasa looks more and more dated, despite the addition of features like Places and Faces. However, unless Apple sorts out iPhoto by making it MUCH faster, and ideally, a sensible underlying folder structure (a complete re-write for iPhoto ’12, anyone?), I find it hard to recommend iPhoto.

(I’m really enjoying iMovie ’11 and GarageBand ’11, and would recommend them as an upgrade…)

[/QUOTE]

 

[james90755]

The bigger issue is very true though; iTunes organizes your music into a very sensible/friendly folder structure (which they've done nothing but improve on in newer releases, finally putting things that aren't really music into sub-folders that correspond with what they are, like iPhone apps or videos). Meanwhile, iPhoto seems to just make its underlying structure an increasingly confusing mess. (Sometimes I wonder if this is intentional on Apple's part, out of fear people would bypass iPhoto and start using competitor's products to work with the libraries they've imported and collected up? After all, a product like Google's Picasa works best when pointed at a well-kept set of descriptive file folders.

Isn't this the key issue. I used to have a highly organized library with directories describing everything. Now its a multi-tiered numeric mess.

I am surprised that few people (other than the thread originator) commented on this.

 

[rexwilson]

iphoto11 still sucks

just wanted to add my voice, as i had hoped Apple would issue more updates by now. iPhoto still sucks.
One minor annoyance that still remains: smart album item counts are still missing (worked fine in iPhoto 09).
The "dumbing down" of the app to make it seem more IOS friendly is a very bad sign... I hope Apple doesn't treat all its customers like children.

 

[LilacsGirl]

Apple's new direction rots.

Yep, Apple is an iGadget company now. I stopped using version x.0 software since iPhoto '08 because in my experience it's been alpha-ware. I don't even trust their OS updates now-a-days since 10.5.7.

Worse than that, I'm finding problems across the board -
iPhoto : is cumbersome ... who wants to "click" in order to even OPEN a search window? HELLO??? There's room for it to be there, READY - it's not like we're probably NOT going to search for photos!

iTunes : now disallows dragging songs from one account to another on the same stupid computer!! I have to move my media folder to another location and navigate through myriad finder windows to add a song from my son's library on my own computer!

Finder : defaults to everything being blocked - permissions are a nightmare - i can use Word on my son's account, even tho it's installed on my account on the same computer.

Apple has become a gadgets company - and Mac has dumbed itself down to appeal to the RETARDED mainstream computer market. It's like using a PC - NOT intuitive at all. Really rubbish. i wish I had stayed on 10.5.7 and never upgrated to Snow Leopard, iPhoto 11 or iTunes 10 !!

PEE YEW It stinks.

----------

Phew. Successfully downgraded to iPhoto 09. Can't believe I had to do this. Unfortunately I can't see many of our grumbles being addressed in a future release. Smoothness perhaps, but not all the pulled features.

i admire your commitment. I'm still hoping that it's me, and that this is not the worst MacNightmare i've ever had. But I'm not confident. Deep down, i think Apple has become a mere PC ... and that Mac's glory days are long gone. What a huge disappointment. Stinko.

 

[tjbnf]

Yes, it does suck still

Wondering if the latest upgrades have done anything to help salvage the train wreck of performance that iPhoto '11 embodies (at least for this user and the others in this thread)?

No, no salvaging by Apple here. iPhoto '11 is indeed software best described as "sucky," "suckfest," and "Sucky McSuckerson."

 

[ELMI0001]

Wondering if the latest upgrades have done anything to help salvage the train wreck of performance that iPhoto '11 embodies (at least for this user and the others in this thread)?

No, no salvaging by Apple here. iPhoto '11 is indeed software best described as "sucky," "suckfest," and "Sucky McSuckerson."

Downloaded after iOS 5 and latest iPhoto update to enable PhotoStream. No problems. Seems good to me.

 

[Sky Blue]

I've been using iPhoto 9, a lot recently. It still sucks, not as bad as 9.0 but the layout/UI is terrible. I'm hoping this fall or (gulp) next we get iPhoto 10.0 (X?)