iTunes 7.5 Next Week?

AppleInsider is reporting both Windows and OS X will see simultaneous releases of iTunes 7.5 in hopes of correcting a number of bugs such as freezing when upgrading iTunes store songs to DRM free versions. We’re also supposed to see better management of duplicate songs and videos along with better stability.

There is no mention of other possible upgrades we might see to device support. I’m a little leery about the upgrade coming soon after the new iPhone Jailbreak. I won’t be upgrading to iTunes 7.5 anytime soon and I urge you to hold off as well even people without iPhones. Wait for the reviews to trickle out and I will try to keep you posted as to what I hear and decide to do in the near future. For now, keep whatever version you have unless you’re having issues to the point of using RealPlayer (do they still make that?)

So just wait a few days, listen to some music, hang out and be cool. Everything will be sorted out for you. If you want song duplication management, I recommend Dupin which is an AppleScript that works in conjunction with iTunes to find duplicate songs. Dupin is shareware, but the only feature lacking is the inability to see more than 20 results at a time. For Windows there is DoubleKiller. I’ve never used it but it looks like it works with more than iTunes so have at it.

iPhoto’s Phatal Phlaw

I recently upgraded from iPhoto ‘06 to iPhoto ‘08. While I have had my gripes with iPhoto in the past including poor file management or the crazy duplication of photos. Whenever you made an edit to a photo, iPhoto would save one copy of the picture in an “originals” folder and then put another copy in a modified “folder” therefore doubling the size of your photo library…unnecessary! Why not just save the metadata changes instead of a whole other picture? I wish I could tell you iPhoto ‘08 remedied these problems, but I honestly can’t tell you if it has or not because of its new flaw.

What you are looking at now is the events screen, new to iPhoto ‘08, mildly obscured by the “Welcome” screen (can’t have you seeing ALL my stuff). In my opinion, the best feature of the update. Each icon is an event, or roll of photographs if you will. All you have to do to quickly browse photos is just drag your mouse from side to side over a thumbnail, and it will sequentially show all the pictures in that event as you slide across. Easy and quick.

However, let’s say I want to take some pictures from an event or roll and upload them to Facebook through my browser. Previously, when browsing photos in your OS X finder you were able to access the iPhoto folder, see the redundant originals and modified folder and select the folder you want and upload away. With iPhoto ‘08, when you access the iPhoto folder you are presented with:

the iPhoto Library (in Coverflow (an amazing Leopard addition by the way)). Notice how it’s not like the other browseable folders on the left and right. So what happens when you try to browse the folder?

That’s right, it opens iPhoto making it impossible to just browse your photos to upload to a site or to upload a single photo for an event like a Facebook event which is what I was trying to do. You have to export photos individually through the File>Export function or add a plugin like the one brought to you be Facebook developers or a flickr plugin, though this still doesn’t allow you to browse your photo library from a web browser.

Is Apple trying to hold my photos hostage? Or is Apple trying to make iPhoto so easy that it’s complicated? Perhaps they’re trying to prevent people like me from accidentally deleting a photo from the iPhoto Library folder and then wonder why it’s missing in my library when I have iPhoto open. I think that’s what Time Machine is for, right? Here’s hoping Apple will remedy this or someone will develop a plugin to allow you to browse your photos in the finder or in preview. This is also a heads up for anyone looking to upgrade. I feel all the new features are worth it, but this one really take a small piece of my soul away from me.

UPDATE: So I’m allowed to miss something sometimes. According to the comment below, I should be able to circumvent this complaint. When I get home I’ll give it a shot. Thanks for the tip. However, I don’t think this will resolve the issue of trying to search the album in a browser finder.

UPDATE 2: It turns out that you can in fact through the finder look at your photos in OS X if you have iPhoto ‘08, but you are still unable to do this through a web browser finder like trying to upload photos to a site through that site’s finder. Well I guess that takes care of one problem.