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Apple’s iPhoto 5 is great. A lot better than any of the previous iPhotos Ⅰ have worked with – namely 2 and 4. But whenever Ⅰ am working with it any more than just basic „let me download my pics and that is it“ Ⅰ get cramps and start feeling annoyed by its look and feel, which is so un-Apple-like.

Let me rant a bit more about it:

User Interface

There is no toolbar, Neo.

A key concept, but where is it? Yes, we have a brushed metal look, yes we have the two pane/three pane view. This all looks familiar. But then there are little things missing, like „customize toolbar“, a feature that is available in many Apple applications. iPhot has a menu item where you can deselect some items in that toolbar, that’s it. No re-arranging stuff, no choice for small/large items or even text-only.

Come out, come out, wherever you are!

Some of the features you need to work with pictures (like changing a bunch of items at once, exporting the, etc.) are available in the context-menu (good!), but are also available in the menus. Its just that Ⅰ would expect editing features in the Edit menu (where some are, but not all), as well as Ⅰ would look for an „export“ feature in the File menu, not some obscure Sharing menu. Oh, and there is this neat (erm…) little pop-up menu in Finder.app that somehow offers features that are in the contextual menu, which would have a nice place here in iPhoto, too.

To Keyword or not to keyword…

Have you worked with keywords in iPhoto? What a pain in the butt. There is a list of keywords on the lower left hand side of the window, but is not there to set keywords for pics but to change the view of your current photoset by these keywords. OK, Ⅰ tripped into this pit quite some times, especially when Ⅰ just have made a larger selection of pictures that Ⅰ want to tag with one keyword only to find my selection vanishing because… Argl. Anyhow, have you found out how the tagging system works? First you need to go to iPhoto’s preferences and create the keywords, a tedious process. (why not have an easy interface, like say a text box where you enter the name of a new tag/keyword and it creates it upon hitting enter?). When you have created the keywords you plan on using you can go back to your pictures, select the ones you want to tag and then what? Where is the „apply keyword“ command? Contextual menu? Nope. Any other Menu? Nope. Don’t press the tags in the lower left box of the screen! Maybe there is some other editing window? Yes – it is called „information“ where you have three sections, two of those do not allow you to edit anything, and then there is the keywords pane. Here you can set keywords, but not create them. Whoever is responsible for this please explain why. Ⅰ know Apple has some real great guys for interface design, but in the ages of Flickr and del.icio.us this is ignorance! Tagging needs to be easy and fast and fun – else noone is going to use it!

Missing in Action

1. Services (iPhoto is Cocoa, right?)
2. AppleScript Menu (iTunes has one, and don’t you think there are many repetitious tasks in iPhoto worth scripting?)
3. Brwosing your Library like in iTunes
4. A list view
5. Find Duplicate
6. Delete Originals
7. iTunes can manage the iTunes Music folder but can also work with other locations – iPhoto cannot.
8. Better integration with iTunes – select iPhoto albums in iTunes Visualization

Sidenote

Wouldn’t it be great if Apple had a blog that you could trackback with „posts like this“ (or at least with feature requests?)

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