5 ms·

Agreed. It doesn't just work. It works until you want an opinion, then it stabs you in the face repetitively. My first encounter of this was the stupid filesys

by meaty 14y ago

Agreed. It doesn't just work. It works until you want an opinion, then it stabs you in the face repetitively. My first encounter of this was the stupid filesystem abstraction iPhoto decided to enforce upon me. After removing iPhoto, it was bearable. This slowly cranked on until I ended up with basically OS-X as a window manager for a terminal emulator, browser, ViewNX and Apple Mail connected to GMail (which didn't work properly either and ended up just being done in a browser). As iWork was shit and corrupted documents left right and centre, I had to use Parallels with Windows Vista + Office 2007 as well. Granted I could have used Office for Mac but it was the 2004 version which was a POS that relied on Rosetta. As for the iPhone, ugh that was hell. Nothing worked properly and each iOS release was literally scary. My pregnant wife actually begged me not to upgrade my iPhone in case it knackered the battery more and she got left without being able to communicate with me (I'm dead serious there). I actually bought a shit Nokia with a GiffGaff SIM in it to carry around in case the iPhone died.

revscat 14y ago
> My first encounter of this was the stupid filesystem abstraction iPhoto decided to enforce upon me. After removing iPhoto, it was bearable. This makes no sense. iPhoto stores your photos in a directory structure on your system. This directory is like any other. If you want to extract the photos from them you can. You can also just right-click on your photos from within iPhoto and extract them. > After removing iPhoto, it was bearable. What was bearable? Why didn't you try and fix the problem? I've been using iPhoto for almost 10 years, across ~6 different machines, and have never had any issues with it.
- calinet6 14y ago
  It's sometimes not intuitive that some directories on Mac look like packages. Sometimes you just need to right-click View Package Contents to access the directory, and I'm sure that tiny fence solves many many support headaches for 99% of users.
  - revscat 14y ago
    If you know the difference between a package and a directory then you should probably know enough to right click. That's pretty minor.
    - meaty 14y ago
      Yes and that isn't actually the problem I had :)
- meaty 14y ago
  It was unbearable because the abstraction was inconsistent when it came to: a) talking to the library from the command line - the mapping between the UI and the filesystem was completely abstract. b) talking to the library from apps - the UI was horrible and inconsistent. c) metadata was entirely non transparent and hard to get at. Bearable was removing iPhoto and installing Nikon ViewNX which came with my D70. This has no abstraction - the filesystem is the abstraction. (I know how to access the source files BTW).
  - revscat 14y ago
    > a) talking to the library from the command line - the mapping between the UI and the filesystem was completely abstract. So... doing "find . -type f -name '*.jpg' -print" is outside of your capabilities? > b) talking to the library from apps - the UI was horrible and inconsistent. What were you trying to do? > c) metadata was entirely non transparent and hard to get at. man mdls
    - meaty 14y ago
      So... doing "find . -type f -name '.jpg' -print" is outside of your capabilities?* No but doing that when iPhoto stores backups of your images is a pain in the arse. b) talking to the library from apps - the UI was horrible and inconsistent Automator + Photoshop. > c) metadata was entirely non transparent and hard to get at. Yes but that doesn't deal with folders which aren't indexed. For example if you do an iPhoto import it can lag for a while before Spotlight catches up. Bang - synchronisation problem. This shot me badly. The whole solution is just bad.
      - revscat 14y ago
        > No but doing that when iPhoto stores backups of your images is a pain in the arse. In what way? > Yes but that doesn't deal with folders which aren't indexed. For example if you do an iPhoto import it can lag for a while before Spotlight catches up. Bang - synchronisation problem. Moving goalposts. First you said the metadata was opaque. It wasn't. Now you're saying there is lag. What were you trying to do? I do a lot of photography, and while I am no means a pro -- or even a semi-pro -- I have done automator scripts against iPhoto with zero problems. You still haven't said what you were trying to accomplish.
coldtea 14y ago
>My first encounter of this was the stupid filesystem abstraction iPhoto decided to enforce upon me. iPhoto is an application. Not the OS. Tons of apps in Windows and Linux that work with similar abstractions as iPhoto. If you don't like the abstraction use another app. There are around 10-15 for photo management on the Mac, from big guns like Lightroom and Aperture to tons of lightweight image managers. That said, what you write makes no sense. You might as well have written: "My first encounter of this was the stupid filesystem abstraction PostgreSQL decided to enforce upon me" (I want my tables in plain CSV files, damnit!). >This slowly cranked on until I ended up with basically OS-X as a window manager for a terminal emulator, browser, ViewNX and Apple Mail connected to GMail (which didn't work properly either and ended up just being done in a browser). I fail to see how it "didn't work properly". Been using Gmail and Mail.app for 7 years. Any particular real-world problem? >As iWork was shit and corrupted documents left right and centre Never had that. >Granted I could have used Office for Mac but it was the 2004 version which was a POS that relied on Rosetta. Ever thought of upgrading it?
- tolmasky 14y ago
  > iPhoto is an application. Not the OS. This is needless (and incorrect) semantics. An OS is just a collection of applications (perhaps the distinction you were trying to make was the kernel or "base OS"). As far as the end user is concerned, when they get a new Mac it comes with iPhoto, which is made by Apple, the same people that make the rest of the OS (unless they get the ONE configuration of the Mac Pro which is the only hardware that doesn't include it). More importantly, when they plug any photo taking device into their freshly opened Mac, iPhoto pops up until they find and explicitly turn off the preference to do that. To and end user (and even by many of the existing technical definitions of OS), iPhoto is part of the OS.
  - coldtea 14y ago
    >This is needless (and incorrect) semantics. Incorrect in what parallel universe? >An OS is just a collection of applications (perhaps the distinction you were trying to make was the kernel or "base OS"). Yes. OS X is just a collection of applications of which iPhoto is NOT one. IIRC, they don't even bundle iLife anymore (you're supposed to get it from the App Store) but that's beside the point. >As far as the end user is concerned (...) To an end user (and even by many of the existing technical definitions of OS), iPhoto is part of the OS. Are you some naive end user OR an HN commenter that CAN tell the different between OS X and iPhoto, and doesn't complain about the latter on a thread about the first?
miloshadzic 14y ago
No matter how awful iPhoto is, it's still better than almost anything you can find on Linux. I know because that was one of my biggest gripes while I was using Ubuntu up to about 5 months ago. And it's not about how Macs just work, it's that you have apps for almost anything that actually work.

by meaty 14y ago

revscat 14y ago

> My first encounter of this was the stupid filesystem abstraction iPhoto decided to enforce upon me. After removing iPhoto, it was bearable. This makes no sense. iPhoto stores your photos in a directory structure on your system. This directory is like any other. If you want to extract the photos from them you can. You can also just right-click on your photos from within iPhoto and extract them. > After removing iPhoto, it was bearable. What was bearable? Why didn't you try and fix the problem? I've been using iPhoto for almost 10 years, across ~6 different machines, and have never had any issues with it.

calinet6 14y ago
It's sometimes not intuitive that some directories on Mac look like packages. Sometimes you just need to right-click View Package Contents to access the directory, and I'm sure that tiny fence solves many many support headaches for 99% of users.
- revscat 14y ago
  If you know the difference between a package and a directory then you should probably know enough to right click. That's pretty minor.
  - meaty 14y ago
    Yes and that isn't actually the problem I had :)
meaty 14y ago
It was unbearable because the abstraction was inconsistent when it came to: a) talking to the library from the command line - the mapping between the UI and the filesystem was completely abstract. b) talking to the library from apps - the UI was horrible and inconsistent. c) metadata was entirely non transparent and hard to get at. Bearable was removing iPhoto and installing Nikon ViewNX which came with my D70. This has no abstraction - the filesystem is the abstraction. (I know how to access the source files BTW).
- revscat 14y ago
  > a) talking to the library from the command line - the mapping between the UI and the filesystem was completely abstract. So... doing "find . -type f -name '*.jpg' -print" is outside of your capabilities? > b) talking to the library from apps - the UI was horrible and inconsistent. What were you trying to do? > c) metadata was entirely non transparent and hard to get at. man mdls
  - meaty 14y ago
    So... doing "find . -type f -name '.jpg' -print" is outside of your capabilities?* No but doing that when iPhoto stores backups of your images is a pain in the arse. b) talking to the library from apps - the UI was horrible and inconsistent Automator + Photoshop. > c) metadata was entirely non transparent and hard to get at. Yes but that doesn't deal with folders which aren't indexed. For example if you do an iPhoto import it can lag for a while before Spotlight catches up. Bang - synchronisation problem. This shot me badly. The whole solution is just bad.
    - revscat 14y ago
      > No but doing that when iPhoto stores backups of your images is a pain in the arse. In what way? > Yes but that doesn't deal with folders which aren't indexed. For example if you do an iPhoto import it can lag for a while before Spotlight catches up. Bang - synchronisation problem. Moving goalposts. First you said the metadata was opaque. It wasn't. Now you're saying there is lag. What were you trying to do? I do a lot of photography, and while I am no means a pro -- or even a semi-pro -- I have done automator scripts against iPhoto with zero problems. You still haven't said what you were trying to accomplish.

coldtea 14y ago

>My first encounter of this was the stupid filesystem abstraction iPhoto decided to enforce upon me. iPhoto is an application. Not the OS. Tons of apps in Windows and Linux that work with similar abstractions as iPhoto. If you don't like the abstraction use another app. There are around 10-15 for photo management on the Mac, from big guns like Lightroom and Aperture to tons of lightweight image managers. That said, what you write makes no sense. You might as well have written: "My first encounter of this was the stupid filesystem abstraction PostgreSQL decided to enforce upon me" (I want my tables in plain CSV files, damnit!). >This slowly cranked on until I ended up with basically OS-X as a window manager for a terminal emulator, browser, ViewNX and Apple Mail connected to GMail (which didn't work properly either and ended up just being done in a browser). I fail to see how it "didn't work properly". Been using Gmail and Mail.app for 7 years. Any particular real-world problem? >As iWork was shit and corrupted documents left right and centre Never had that. >Granted I could have used Office for Mac but it was the 2004 version which was a POS that relied on Rosetta. Ever thought of upgrading it?

tolmasky 14y ago
> iPhoto is an application. Not the OS. This is needless (and incorrect) semantics. An OS is just a collection of applications (perhaps the distinction you were trying to make was the kernel or "base OS"). As far as the end user is concerned, when they get a new Mac it comes with iPhoto, which is made by Apple, the same people that make the rest of the OS (unless they get the ONE configuration of the Mac Pro which is the only hardware that doesn't include it). More importantly, when they plug any photo taking device into their freshly opened Mac, iPhoto pops up until they find and explicitly turn off the preference to do that. To and end user (and even by many of the existing technical definitions of OS), iPhoto is part of the OS.
- coldtea 14y ago
  >This is needless (and incorrect) semantics. Incorrect in what parallel universe? >An OS is just a collection of applications (perhaps the distinction you were trying to make was the kernel or "base OS"). Yes. OS X is just a collection of applications of which iPhoto is NOT one. IIRC, they don't even bundle iLife anymore (you're supposed to get it from the App Store) but that's beside the point. >As far as the end user is concerned (...) To an end user (and even by many of the existing technical definitions of OS), iPhoto is part of the OS. Are you some naive end user OR an HN commenter that CAN tell the different between OS X and iPhoto, and doesn't complain about the latter on a thread about the first?

miloshadzic 14y ago

No matter how awful iPhoto is, it's still better than almost anything you can find on Linux. I know because that was one of my biggest gripes while I was using Ubuntu up to about 5 months ago. And it's not about how Macs just work, it's that you have apps for almost anything that actually work.