A few days ago I was sitting together with my Mum in her hotel room and explained how she can upload all her photo treasures past and present to Flickr. A while ago she bought iPhoto for her iPad as a convenient solution that did not require a laptop (which she doesn’t like).
Yesterday Apple have released a new version of iPhoto 2.0 for iOS – and sadly ruined some of the best features the app had to offer.
Let me share with you my official App Store review that I’ve just posted – before it is deleted and deemed “inappropriate”.
I used to like iPhoto for iPad. That was BEFORE the upgrade to 2.0 yesterday. Great image editing tools aside, I could share a sheer unlimited amount of images to albums on Flickr and Facebook with ease, and keep things in sync. It was great!
Since the update you can only share a maximum of 10 images at a time, because the default iOS 7 sharing dialogue is used, rather than the proprietary iPhoto sharing option from before. I can almost hear the discussion in the development team: “Nah, we’ve got that covered natively in iOS 7 – there’s no need for that rather complicated code in there anymore”.
And really, the native sharing option doesn’t sound so bad at first. But here’s the caveat: the app no longer knows which images you have previously shared.
If you’ve made a change to an image, all you can do is share it again. You can no longer replace it when you’ve made a change to the colour, title or tags.
Gone are the icons that showed you which images were already uploaded. One of the most important features was axed in the name of streamlining.
Titles are another problem in the new version: none of your iPhoto titles are posted to Flickr or Facebook. The reason you USED those titles was so that you didn’t have to type things twice. In fact all you can do in the new version is to specify a single title for ALL images uploaded in one go.
And if you only share a single picture, the title from iPhoto is ignored, replaced by a prompt for a new title.
Comments from Flickr and Facebook? Gonski! Streamlined right into the trash can, with that flashy new iOS 7 icon.
But thank god we can order Photo Books for £30 a pop. Whoop-dee-friggin-doo!
Verdict: this update is good for Apple, not for their customers. Right now iPhoto is no better than the standard built-in Photos App.
- Download iPhoto for iOS from the App Store today
- Learn more about iPhoto for iOS
- or even better, restore Version 1.1.1 from an old backup
- let Hongikat show you how
- Note to self: find a new Flickr app for Mum