Comment by masklinn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by masklinn | Hacker News Reader

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> I remember the program automatically copying the files from a camera to some folder deep within the hard drive and then giving not a clue later as to which folder that was and certainly not allowing any exploration between folders...

Well the fundamental idea behind iPhoto is: why would you care where it put your files at all?

* If you want to see or edit your pictures, you can do so via iPhoto (or iPhoto-compatible image manipulation)

* If you want to mail or export pictures, iPhoto has "Share" and "Export" options

* If you want to open one of your pictures in a third-party software, OSX's standard file picker has a "media" section which gives you a special iPhoto file picker (which works extremely well, it can even search through all your tags and faces)

All the iLife apps (iMovie and GarageBand, mostly) work this way. So does iTunes.

> Don't you find "right click" with one-button mouse a bit tricky?

Control-click. And every mac that has shipped in the last 3 or 4 years can right click.

> Well the fundamental idea behind iPhoto is: why would you care where it put your files at all?

As you say, it's not just iPhoto - it's a big part of the iVillage. Certainly some people - not just geeks - like this approach, but I find it patronizing ("Don't worry your pretty little head about where we store the files.") and authoritarian ("You may not delete the Pictures folder from your home folder or give it an alternative name.") all at the same time.

Long story short, I shouldn't have to open an application to grab one file. I should be able to use the file explorer. Apple seems to go out of its way to make that harder for me.

> Certainly some people - not just geeks - like this approach

I would argue that non-geeks are, in fact, far more likely to enjoy this approach than geeks.

> I find it patronizing ("Don't worry your pretty little head about where we store the files.")

Well except it's easy to know where they're stored.

> and authoritarian ("You may not delete the Pictures folder from your home folder or give it an alternative name.") all at the same time.

And this one is utterly bonkers: it's an open not-secret-at-all that iTunes and iPhoto let you move, create switch library by pressing Option as you start them.

> Long story short, I shouldn't have to open an application to grab one file. I should be able to use the file explorer.

You are. It's not like the file is stored in a secret binary database.

> Apple seems to go out of its way to make that harder for me.

Whatever.

> Well except it's easy to know where they're stored.

Sure, I can control-click the folder, select "Show Package Contents" (?!? an obvious way to say "open this folder"), open the directory named "Originals" and then drill down into the year-stamped folders until I find my albums. But clearly Apple doesn't want me doing that. Otherwise, the photo library would work like all the normal folders. I could simply double click to open it and view its contents.

This is all I meant by "Apple goes out of its way to make this harder."

Why are you using iPhoto again? It’s not for you. I see no reason whatsoever why I would ever want to touch my photos in the filesystem (and there is nothing wrong with that) but you seem to need that functionality (and there is nothing wrong with that).

Apple has always provided an alternative way of importing photos in Mac OS X (it is, in fact, the way of importing photos that predates iPhoto), the application is called “Image Capture”, it’s in your applications folder and you can make it you default for whenever you are connecting a camera. It puts photos in folders.

So, "drag and drop" out of iPhoto isn't what you want, and you don't want to just use the "open file" dialog from another OSX app (since that lets you access all parts of the iPhoto library), and then you don't like how you have to click down a few folders once you do use "show package contents"?

The only person going out of their way to make this difficult is you.

FFS, Apple is far from perfect, but the things you're complaining about have pretty simple answers.

Let's imagine I use a Mac. I open Gmail and I want to send my father a cute picture of his niece. There's no direct way to do this without leaving the application I'm in (Safari) and going somewhere else to get at the picture.

By contrast, if this were a Pages document, I could simply click on "Attach a file" and then browse to the folder where the document lives. In the case of iPhoto and iTunes, this feature - file browsing - is simply not as straightfoward. I don't think that's up for debate. You are free to suggest ways that I can get at the photo (through iPhoto, through another OSX app), but I can't browse to the item the way that I can browse to other files on my filesystem.

> The only person going out of their way to make this difficult is you.

I really don't see how. I want something perfectly normal: I want "Attach a file" to work. In many cases, with many Apple programs, it does. But in a number of other cases (iPhoto, iTunes), it does not. This is not my fault. I am not doing anything special or nerdy or geeky here.

> There's no direct way to do this (...)

Ah, but you can access anything in iPhoto in the "open file" dialog that opens up when you go to attach a file in gmail. It's in the left sidebar under "media", from there you can get to anything in iPhoto organized in the same way they are in iPhoto (here is a screenshot: http://civicit.com/~tvon/files/osx-open-file.png).

Obviously though, you didn't find this, and I can see how that could be a bit obtuse if you expect to browse "Pictures" and find a bunch of image files.

> Let's imagine I use a Mac. I open Gmail and I want to send my father a cute picture of his niece. There's no direct way to do this without leaving the application I'm in (Safari) and going somewhere else to get at the picture.

I hope you are not serious, because it's not only trivial, I explained how it works in the comment you first replied to:

> * If you want to open one of your pictures in a third-party software, OSX's standard file picker has a "media" section which gives you a special iPhoto file picker (which works extremely well, it can even search through all your tags and faces)

OSX's standard image picker has a direct access to iPhoto libraries, and gives you direct access to iPhoto's search engine as well. Likewise for iTunes.

> I really don't see how. I want something perfectly normal: I want "Attach a file" to work. In many cases, with many Apple programs, it does. But in a number of other cases (iPhoto, iTunes), it does not. This is not my fault. I am not doing anything special or nerdy or geeky here.

Out of 6 phrases in this comment, only 2 are correct. And one of them only barely.

I was serious, and I was wrong. Thanks and thanks to tvon for explaining how this works. I didn't read your initial comment that far down since I thought I knew how it worked. I was busy being annoyed at Apple and in a rush to write my response.

In any case, thanks for clearing this up for me.

Welcome to the Dark Side.

"Don't worry your pretty little head about where we store the files."

It's just a different type/style of abstraction that may not be suited to you!

All file systems essentially hide the nasty details of where and how files are stored (which inode does it start at, is it fragmented across multiple sectors, which physical device?).

From a UX point of view there is a lot to be said for not treating every single file in exactly the same way.

I'm sure it's an approach that will get more and more prevalent in future (context relevant functionality for the types of files you're currently interacting with/managing).

Control-click.

Needing two hands to get a context menu is the kind of thing that makes me question the 'minimalism' of OSX. Same as needing two keys(/hands) to do 'delete to the right'

So the news that you can use a two button mouse with Mac OS X since, oh, I don’t know, forever haven’t reached you?

Unless it ships with one it doesn't exist for most users, especially most Mac users.

All current Macs ship with mice or trackpads that support right clicking.

I've used an iMac that shipped with Snow Leopard and it shipped with a single-button mouse.

Check System Preferences. It’s off by default.

Mice that support right clicking have been shipping with every Mac since 2005, trackpads that support right clicking with every Mac since 2006 or so.

So... when I help someone out and need to right click, it's not an annoyance to either alter their settings or have to use two hands? The 'single button interface' demand is silly - all it does is force people to use modifier keys to get the functionality they need. How this is different to just enabling right-click I'll never know.

I don’t know if you noticed but I was at no point defending Apple’s decision to disable the right click by default. I was correcting a comment.

My apologies.

> Check System Preferences. It’s off by default.

If it's off by default it doesn't exist for most users.

You were completely wrong and I corrected you. That’s it. I was not commenting on the wiseness of not enabling the right click by default.

I can't verify this at the moment, but I'm pretty sure that you can assign the right and middle click actions on a three button mouse to do Cmd- and ctrl- clicks, so this is a nonissue for those of us with a standard mouse.

I'm thinking more about the macbook pros that I see lots of people with. Another pet peeve with apple laptops is that the physical click is only at the bottom of the trackpad - why not the top? I have large hands and it's really not anywhere near the resting place for my fingers, especially if I'm typing.

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