iPhoto 4.0.1 Problem: Can't Get Around These Damn Corrupted Files

So I still can't figure out what's up with iPhoto 4.0.1. I tried everything I could find on the web, and I still keep getting a batch of whacked-out corrupted files. Not sure what the heck they are.

And I found something else that was kind of odd... The iPhoto upgrade, despite having a bunch of weird files in it, still had more total files in the library and the same exact library opened in the last version of iPhoto. Are those corrupted files perhaps not photos at all but some other conversion gobbledygook?

I've resolved to just go through iPhoto photo-by-photo to make sure I'm not loosing photos, since I can't seem to be able to figure out any better way to do it. I would love to be saved so if anyone knows how to avoid this let me know.

FairTunes: Remove Copy-Protection from iTunes Music Store Files

I downloaded this program but I've yet to use it. In any case, here's the link. It's always annoying when I'm trying to share my music with people on my network - namely the four Macs in my family - since I can't enable all those computers to use the software. And even if I could, it's be such a pain in the butt. If Apple can keep you from copying the songs that are being played, how come you can't play shared songs that are protected? Seems stupid. That's the main reason I'd use this program.

iPhoto 4.0.1 Problem: Still Messes Up Photos

The same 77 photos that were messed up before are messed up again, despite it taking a much long time to update the library. The solution on this webpage didn't work for me either. I was still missing a bunch of photos even after doing what that site said. What a pain in the arse this is becoming. I'm thinking I may just import the photos to 4.0.1 and have the same library open on a separate computer next to me in iPhoto 2.x and just manually try to figure out which ones are messed up. This import issue needs to be fixed asap. In search of a work around... I'll keep you posted.

iPhoto 4.0 Review

I was sitting around waiting for iPhoto to come up with an update to make it faster. Then I stumbled across the fact that Apple had made this a paid update. More than a little disappointed, I procrastinated a while before putting up the cash. Although I do have to say iPhoto + iMovie + iDVD + GarageBand for $49 seems very reasonable if you're actually gonna use all of them, or even at least a few of them. I like iPhoto a lot so I pretty much only bought it for that, although I intend to get a digital video camera soon and expect to be making more use of iMovie and iDVD too. GarageBand is kind of fun to fool around with, but I'll probably get into that more later. In any case, while I wish iPhoto were still free, I can understand why a marketing decision like this would be made and I can't complain that much because the price is reasonable.

Software Update should update iPhoto (and other iLife apps) too

As getting better software in and of itself is my focus here, let me get back to that, the iPhoto that came with was 4.0. It seemed to be pretty screwed up. But before I get into that, why doesn't iPhoto get incorporated to Software Update? I dug around a little on the net and discovered that iPhoto 4.0.1 is available for download as an update to 4.0. Software Update didn't catch this but it sure seems like to should have.

This may be because I don't keep iPhoto directly in the Applications folder. I divided all my apps into 6 categories and then use a FruitMenu Apple Menu item to access each of these folders directly. It lets me get to apps faster. (FruitMenu is another favorite app of mine, by the way.) I noticed that this stopped the iPhoto 4.0.1 updater from figuring out where iPhoto was. But come on, how hard is it to look a little farther for the app? If that's the reason why iPhoto doesn't get updated, it needs to be fixed.

What a mess updating the library was in 4.0...

iPhoto 4.0 screws up photos. I say that generally because a quick Google search led me to find those who share(d) in my suffering. Check out this page or this one for some of the others. These were what eventually led me to figure out that 4.0.1 exists. I'm installing that right now. While I'm waiting, let me tell you about the problems.

I don't know exactly what was going on, but I kept getting 77 photos placed in a "Recovered Photos" folder. I couldn't tell if these were actually photos or some other kind of screwed up file, but they all had image names. Some of them had huge amount of memory allocated to them - like numbers with 10 digits. Not sure what the heck that meant. Most of them were just pure black with no image showing up, although 3 of them were images that I could see.

I tried a bunch of things but they kept coming up like that. I tried to just figure out which images they were and take them off of my back up and import then in some other way, but that was proving to be a huge pain in the butt as iPhoto apparently removed them from their original folders and put them in this new one. I could have done it by date, but that would have required me to go through them one by one. If 4.0.1 doesn't work, that's just what I might end up doing.

Oh, and there's a point for you. I conveniently just backed up my computer, including all my iPhoto photo libraries. So I've got them all sitting on my external HD. But I'm sure many users don't have that luxury and are gonna be quite peeved when they find out that a bunch of their photos are simply gone into some dark underworld of iPhoto corrupt photos.

OK, 4.0.1 is taking forever to upload my photos. It seems to be stuck at a certain point and not progressing any farther. I'll get back to you...

iTunes Suggestion: Display Lyrics

I sent this idea off to Apple an upgrade or two or three ago and haven't heard a damn thing yet. Perhaps I sound a little arrogant from wondering why Apple doesn't listen to ever-so-important me, but I'd say it's more frustration due to selfishness in that I want this feature. In any case, I feel like this is a great idea that would simply make iTunes kick ass even more than it's already doing. Here's what I'm thinking...

Each song would be linked to a text file that would look something like this sample from Outkast's Rosa Parks.

0019 Ah ha, hush that fuss
0021 Everybody move to the back of the bus
0023 Do you wanna bump and slump with us
0025 We the type of people make the club get crunk

Each new line of the text file would be a new line of the song (or however you felt like dividing the lyrics up). The numbers in front of the line of lyrics are the time those lyrics start, the first two digits being the minute and the last two digits being the seconds, so the "Ah ha" line starts 0 minutes, 19 seconds into the song. Then whatever starts after the space which follows the four digits would be the line until the return at the end of the line and the next number. By implication, a line of lyrics is "done" by the time the next ones start.

iTunes would take these things and display them in the iTunes window. It could go right in where it currently shows the artist and title of the song. With a little GUI rework, you could have a line at the top scrolling the lyrics, a line below that doing what it currently does, and the line below that with the time, also as is currently the case.

When iTunes starts playing a song, it would load up its lyrics text file and scroll (or display, or whatever) those words in the lyrics field to match the time in the text file. It would work in the small or large versions of the iTunes window, and could easily make its way to the iPod as well. So the first line above would scroll across the screen starting at 19 seconds but already being across by the time the next line starts at 21 seconds. You'd probably need to have them start a little bit before they are to begin so that the lyrics are visible when they need to be. But technically this is beyond feasible - it's a piece of cake.

The first obvious question is where do these text files come from? Obviously the artists themselves could put out an "official" lyrics file with each song. But for the majority of songs that won't have that, the users can do it. Similar to the naming system set up by the CDDB, which lets users upload the artist, song title, and so on to the CDDB database if the song is unknown, the iTunes lyrics implementation could use some kind of central database where users could upload the lyrics for things that weren't there already. This could grow as users put more and more information in there.

Moreover, this would open up further possibilities. Karaoke, anyone? Do one of those things where the voice is struck from the song (like some karaoke stereos have) and you're iTunes has just become a karaoke machine. I personally would like to use it to study languages... listening to music is a great way to brush up and learn new vocab words. It's just such a hassle to always have to dig up the lyrics on the net for those parts where you can't quite catch what they're saying. And, besides all that, never again would you mistake CCR's "There's a bad moon on the rise" for "There's a bathroom on the right." (Fess up, I know you just had an "Oh, that's what they were saying!" moment.)

This would just make iTunes so much cooler than it has been up to this point.