Proprietary elegance good enough? (Was: Re: OT: notebook shopping)

[Chris Gehlker]

On Apr 26, 2008, at 1:58 PM, Kurt Granroth wrote:

> Chris Gehlker wrote:
>> On Apr 25, 2008, at 10:36 PM, Kurt Granroth wrote:
>>> But it [the iLife suite] does so in a completely and totally  
>>> locked  down fashion.  All files are sucked in, converted to the  
>>> iLife  formats, and good luck ever trying to get them out again.
>> I don't understand what you mean here. I haven't used iLife that  
>> much  but i was able to export pictures from iPhoto in TIFF or JPEG  
>> and  Music from Garage Band as MIDI.
>
> As one-offs, yes.  iPhoto, in fact, is even better than digikam for  
> exporting select photos from an album into a directory without  
> having to create a web album or some other contrivance.  iMovie  
> exports to quite a few formats as well.
>
> What I'm referring to is the original files.  In iPhoto, for  
> instance, good luck trying to share the original pictures in an  
> album with another photo manager.  It keeps the files in an odd  
> directory ordering and orders it through a proprietary database  
> file.  iTunes is the same with their iTunes Library files.  If you  
> randomly add a file into directory tree of either app, they will  
> *not* recognize that it's new and add it to their library.  This is  
> only done via their official import methods.  I've found that it's  
> easier to completely 'nuke' my iPhoto albums whenever I add new  
> photos or videos (since I do it over a shared drive via another  
> application) than to import each one at a time.
>
> Mind you, they have gotten a lot better in recent years.  You can  
> actually have multiple libraries now and even tell each not to move  
> the original files (thus preserving whatever rational order you may  
> have for the originals).  Sharing the originals is now far easier  
> than it used to be... still a pain, but easier.
>
> Still not good enough, IMO.

Thanks for replying, Kurt. I understand your point now and agree.


---
Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely  
or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.

-Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, author, Nobel laureate  
(1872-1970)