So - two days in - not impressed

[episodic]

I'm thinking of returning my 1st mac already.

I have about 14,000 pictures spanning 40 gigabytes. I've tried copying the pics to my mini's harddrive then importing into iphoto.

It stopped with 3000 pics to go and kept displaying a dialog that I should wait till it stopped importing (I hadn't done anything). . .no matter how many times I clicked the one choice it gave me, it redisplayed the dialog again.

So I forced it to quit - deleted that library reopened iphoto - created a new library. So, I started the import again - this time instead of from the mac's harddrive - from the expansion drive (I reasoned that reading and writing from the same drive may have been tough on it). . .

This time, rather than continue to web browse or do anything else, I started it - walked away for an hour.

I came back, woke the machine (went to sleep on it's own) and it was hung with over 7000 pics to go. No harddrive activity - no processor activity. I forced it to quit again and got the rainbow spinning thing that would not go away. I had to hard reset it - and here I am.

So, I'm staring at apple's return policy now - giving it serious consideration. All I want to do is to import my photos. If it is going to choke on this - back to windows I go.
Advice?

 

[fatpat268]

Download an app called Caffeine, it'll prevent the computer from going to sleep while it's activated.

 

[episodic]

Download an app called Caffeine, it'll prevent the computer from going to sleep while it's activated.

So what happened the first and third time it crashed? I just tried to do it again sitting here - like the 1st time. No sleeping. It crashed too.

 

[KeypoX]

that is one issue with mac. When 1 program goes down it generally takes the whole OS down with it. Except FF its crashes pretty good lol.

Maybe try importing a couple thousand at a time? Caffeine is free try that too. Also you can get picasa for mac.

 

[speg]

Only thing I can suggest is divide and conquer. Maybe do 5GB at a time and see how that goes? I had to do the same thing when copying my music library from OS X to Win 7.

 

[episodic]

that is one issue with mac. When 1 program goes down it generally takes the whole OS down with it. Except FF its crashes pretty good lol.

Maybe try importing a couple thousand at a time? Caffeine is free try that too. Also you can get picasa for mac.

THe more I'm learning, the less impressed I am. I thought that a bullet proof OS was supposed to be what I was paying a premium for. Based on unix and all that. THis is why I switched - I was tired of crashes and stuff. At least with windows I could control alt delete and regain control of the OS most of the time.

 

[mugs]

If you give up on an OS based on one problem with one program, why the hell are you going back to Windows?

I agree with the suggestion to import in smaller batches.

 

[episodic]

It was these series of programs that made me want to switch. Ilife and Iwork. I was impressed with how they looked. But seriously - should a new compter choke importing 13,000 jpgs? I've crashed and had to hard reset 3 times in the last 4 hours. I'm doing it small chunks at a time - but I didn't have this trouble in windows.

 

[KeypoX]

THe more I'm learning, the less impressed I am. I thought that a bullet proof OS was supposed to be what I was paying a premium for. Based on unix and all that. THis is why I switched - I was tired of crashes and stuff. At least with windows I could control alt delete and regain control of the OS most of the time.

All OSs have problems, thats the truth. It takes a bit getting used too, and dual booting kinda sucks. But all in all I like it.

iphoto is pretty cool too. Though i just updated picasa on 7 and see it has all of the same features now...

 

[MJinZ]

I'm thinking of returning my 1st mac already.

I have about 14,000 pictures spanning 40 gigabytes. I've tried copying the pics to my mini's harddrive then importing into iphoto.

It stopped with 3000 pics to go and kept displaying a dialog that I should wait till it stopped importing (I hadn't done anything). . .no matter how many times I clicked the one choice it gave me, it redisplayed the dialog again.

So I forced it to quit - deleted that library reopened iphoto - created a new library. So, I started the import again - this time instead of from the mac's harddrive - from the expansion drive (I reasoned that reading and writing from the same drive may have been tough on it). . .

This time, rather than continue to web browse or do anything else, I started it - walked away for an hour.

I came back, woke the machine (went to sleep on it's own) and it was hung with over 7000 pics to go. No harddrive activity - no processor activity. I forced it to quit again and got the rainbow spinning thing that would not go away. I had to hard reset it - and here I am.

So, I'm staring at apple's return policy now - giving it serious consideration. All I want to do is to import my photos. If it is going to choke on this - back to windows I go.
Advice?

iPhoto blows.

Take it from someone with years of Mac and PC experience:

Itunes is awesome
Picasa > >>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> iPhoto

Different comparabilities, mousing algothorisms, hardware, aesthetics etc aside, a Mac is no real different than a Windows machine.

Having experienced that, I have no need to buy a Mac ever again.

Oh and crashes? You should have seen when the first Macbook came out. Kernal Panics (Mac's version of the BSOD) galore caused by the WiFi.

 

[suklee]

THe more I'm learning, the less impressed I am. I thought that a bullet proof OS was supposed to be what I was paying a premium for. Based on unix and all that. THis is why I switched - I was tired of crashes and stuff. At least with windows I could control alt delete and regain control of the OS most of the time.

Did you try Cmd + Option + Esc to force quit the crashed program?

 

[TheStu]

I am testing now, pulling 15GB of photos that have never been in iPhoto (best estimate, 4-5K photos) on the desktop in my sig.

What version of iPhoto are you using?
What version of OS X are you using?
How much RAM does the system have?

On an aside, I cannot recall the last time that I had a single application crash and burn my entire computer.

If you want to return it, return it, maybe install Picasa for OS X and see if it has the same problem, maybe install Windows on the Mac and see if it has the same problem. For all we know, there could be corrupted files in that folder and it is hanging up on those. I have had that happen, digital copying is supposed to be infallible, but I have had files 'go bad' on me. When pulling from the external it could be a USB issue, it could be that OS X/iPhoto sucks, who knows.

I think that the standing recommendation to pull them in a few thousand at a time might be the best option, it could just be that iPhoto is trying to do some sort of background stuff on all 40GB of photos and that eats all the memory leaving none for the actual import. It could be that it is running facial recognition upon import, also slowing up the works eventually crashing it.

As Kai920 said, CMD+ALT+ESC is the equivalent to CTRL+SHIFT+ESC in Windows, it brings up the task manager.

Conversely, you can always open up Terminal, and type 'sudo killall -9 iPhoto' That should kill it too.

 

[TheStu]

Update:
~4800 photos to be processed, iPhoto (launchd actually) is using 150% CPU (since OS X counts 100% utilization of both cores as 200% and on a quad it would be 400% and on a fully tricked Mac Pro, 1600%) so I can see how that might cause problems.

1000 photos down, I can still use my system just fine, no problems.

 

[VinylxScratches]

I would reformat the Mac. I do even when I get new Macs.

 

[aphex]

The newest iphoto does facial recognition, correct? I wonder if that could slow it down a good margin when importing.

 

[episodic]

I finally got all of them in. What a pain

The facial recognition did it's thing overnight. So it seems to be well. Apple has to know that people with large amounts of photos will move to the mac.

It is over with now.

This iphoto library is 40 gigs. What do you think about backing this library up and starting with a new one? Are there an caveats to doing that?

If I were to do that and wanted to pick a photo for Imovie or something else, would I be able to browse both libraries or just one?

 

[Nothinman]

that is one issue with mac. When 1 program goes down it generally takes the whole OS down with it

That shouldn't be the case in any OS these days...

 

[VinylxScratches]

I had an app crash and my OS overall is fine....

 

[Nothinman]

I had an app crash and my OS overall is fine....

Yea, one of the main benefits of virtual memory is that every process has it's own address space and as such is isolated from the rest and the kernel too. So an errant process can't unintentionally affect the address space of any other processes (ignoring threads or processes that intentionally share memory for IPC) or the kernel.

 

[TheStu]

I finally got all of them in. What a pain

The facial recognition did it's thing overnight. So it seems to be well. Apple has to know that people with large amounts of photos will move to the mac.

It is over with now.

This iphoto library is 40 gigs. What do you think about backing this library up and starting with a new one? Are there an caveats to doing that?

If I were to do that and wanted to pick a photo for Imovie or something else, would I be able to browse both libraries or just one?

Starting with a new one? As in, copy the 40GB iPhoto Library out, and then re-transferring the 40GB back over? Or do you mean that you want to put any new pictures into a new library?

 

[speg]

40 GB is getting a bit unwildly. I don't know if there is a limit but I wouldn't want to push it too far. Aperature 3 just came out if you're serious about a more professional tool.

 

[episodic]

Starting with a new one? As in, copy the 40GB iPhoto Library out, and then re-transferring the 40GB back over? Or do you mean that you want to put any new pictures into a new library?

Put new pics in a new library and load this one whenever I need it.

 

[TheStu]

That shouldn't be a problem, but with all different ways that you can organize with iPhoto, why not just keep adding to this library?

 

[rdp6]

iPhoto '06 would crash in Tiger and maybe in Leopard if there was a corrupted file somewhere in a batch of photos to be imported. Also it would hang (but eventually recover) if a .mov was included with the photos.

I haven't had any real issues with iPhoto 09 / SL.