Error when opening iPhoto '08: Photos Have Been Found in the iPhoto Library That Were Not Imported

While copying our photo library from our PC to the Mac, I started getting the above error whenever running iPhoto '08. The number goes up seemingly randomly. If I click No then iPhoto opens as normal. If I click Yes then iPhoto attempts to import these photos, even asking what I want to do with duplicates before quitting at some random point in the import.

After searching discussion forums, I found a solution:

There were files that had gotten "stuck" in the import process, causing iPhoto to crash when recovering the files every time it launches.

To get get rid of them, right click on the iPhoto Package File in the Pictures Folder and choose 'Show Package Contents'. A Finder window will open and you may see in there a folder called 'Importing' with these pics in it. Drag it to the desktop and then relaunch iPhoto. Then you can decide what to do with those files.

Hi I'm and Mac and I'm also a PC

So far, I'm still liking life in with the Mac.

Had a few glitches...

• Importing our photos from our PC to iPhoto lost all the organization we had done with folders. We had folders for events, and iPhoto tried to reorganize everything according to file date. That would have been okay except not all the file dates are related to when they were taken. Sometimes photos are copied or emailed long after it was shot. Also, we have multiple cameras, which causes parallel events (when both cameras were in use at the same time) to be unintentionally combined. So now I'm manually reorganizing everything into Events and Albums.
  
• I'm running Windows in both Boot Camp and VMWare, and had to activate Windows twice. But every time I run Adobe CS2 in either mode, when I run it in the other mode (ie: run in Booth Camp, then run in VMWare), it asks to re-activate. I'm worried it's going to stop allowing this to work at some point, so I've stopped running it from VM.

On the plus side, what's really cool though is being able to run VMWare full-screen with Spaces. I can fly to and from Windows any time. The Unity feature is nice, but I'm using Spaces to reduce the amount of windows visible at once. I have chat & email in one, a browser in another, one is free and one has Windows VM.

I also have Remote Desktop and Chicken of the VNC so I can access other Windows PCs on the network.

Macbook Pro Keyboard Fix

Just did a Software Update check on my MBP.

This showed up in the list:

This update addresses a responsiveness issue on MacBook and MacBook Pro notebook computers. Some MacBook and MacBook Pro systems may occasionally experience a temporary suspension of keyboard input which can last a minute or longer. The Mac OS X 10.5.1 update is required before installing the MacBook, MacBook Pro Software Update 1.1.

Thanks Apple! :)

James Kim Foundation

Last year around this time, James Kim died trying to save his family from a cold winter storm in the Oregon outdoors. He was a tech guy, working for CNet.

CNet has a memorial on their site. A charity foundation has been set up as well.

Mac issues

We're not switching to Mac overnight. We planned to overlap thing while we move our files over and make sure we didn't lose anything in the process.

So far, we've only had a few glitches with the Mac, all of which I read about on sites like MacRumors, AppleInsider, TUAW, and MacNN. The MacRumors Buyer's Guide is very useful.

I went for refurbished units. That seems to be the best way to get a deal since most stores sell at or very close to MSRP. No problems in that respect.

One thing I read was that iMacs were overheating and locking up. So far I haven't seen that happen but I really haven't used the iMac for long periods and it's been pretty cool this fall/winter.

I did run into the "dead keyboard" problem on the MacBook Pro. Both Macs came with Tiger installed and a Leopard "Drop-in" disc. I did a clean install on the MBP and within days the keyboard was randomly going dead. I read that people who upgraded instead of clean install were not experiencing the problem, so I re-installed Tiger and upgraded to Leopard. That seemed to fix it, but just yesterday it happened twice. The trackpad still works, so I can do a restart to get it working again.

The Mail app won't read our corporate MDaemon server IMAP Inbox. I've read that other people have this problem too. I can use Thunderbird in the time being. Some people have worked around it by having their MDaemon mail forwarded to a GMail account. SMTP does work through MDaemon, so you just need GMail to read messages.

I imported our iTunes music and photos from the PC this past week. On the PC, I shared the My Music folder and imported it from iTunes on the Mac. If you have purchased songs on iTunes, make sure to log in to your account and authorize the computer before copying over. That makes it work smoothly. Otherwise you'll get a pop-up message and it will wait for you to answer before finishing copying. Anyway, it looks like everything made it over.

I also exported our playlists from iTunes on the PC. Had to do that one at a time but they imported and worked fine on the Mac.

Moving photos was not as clean, since we use Windows folders to organize our pics. We have ACDSee but don't use it's database features.

The folder organization for people, events, etc. was lost in the transfer. iPhoto automatically groups pics into events based on the file dates, but the dates of photos are not always when they were taken. Sometimes a file was copied or received via email and the date is no longer correct. We'll take this as an opportunity to clean things up and re-organize.

I'm trying to decide on Safari vs Firefox and Mail vs Thunderbird. They all seem pretty good. I use FF and TB on the PC, so I'm leaning towards them on the Mac. The Apple apps have nicer interfaces and better integration with the OS and .Mac (trying out the 60-day trial now).

Switching to Mac

Last month I decided to jump in the Mac world with both feet. We have an iMac at home and I have a MacBook Pro for work.

At home, we've had two hand-built PCs that I've been upgrading for the past few years. It's been a fun hobby, updating video cards, replacing power supplies, etc.

But after seeing the sleek all-in-one design of the iMac, the old, ugly, noisy boxes on our floor had to go. So I won't be able to upgrade the video or CPU. Now we'll spend more time using the computer instead of tweaking it. That's what the Mac is all about.

Happy B-Day C64

From CNN.com:

On Monday, the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, will celebrate the C64's 25th anniversary. Computer pioneers will reflect on the C64's achievements and contribution to the industry. Jack Tramiel, the founder and CEO of Commodore, will attend, along with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and William C. Lowe, father of the IBM PC.

Bye, Bye, CompUSA

Earlier this year CompUSA closed about half its stores, including the one in Woodland Hills, CA (the closest one to me).

Looks like they just decided to shut down the whole business.

They hadn't been competing very well with the newer all-things-to-everybody mega stores. But it was nice to have a choices of places you could go to be around techy things.

I bought my first PC at CompUSA. Packard Bell Pentium 133.