Opinion: What’s The Price Of Good Mac Software?

Apple’s iPhoto is an excellent way for the rest of us to manage our digital photo collection.

I have one major issue with iPhoto. Keyword management. It’s a mess.

Adding keywords to photos in iPhoto is a cumbersome and highly tedious process.

First, you have to set up keywords in iPhoto’s preferences. That’s easy enough.

Then you have to select the photos you want and click on the appropriate keywords to assign to a photo.

That’s where the problems begin. You can’t always determine which keywords should be added to a photo until you see the photo.

And you can’t add keywords on the fly. Adding keywords requires a trip to preferences again.

That’s bad enough but gets worse when added to my typical iPhoto user behavior.

I don’t add keywords to each photo when they’re sucked off my camera and into iPhoto.

I wait around and do them in batches; lots of tedious batches.

Along comes Keyword Manager. Simple, elegant and efficient. Oh, and affordable. That’s what I want.

Keyword Manager is almost all that.

There’s two windows to view over iPhoto. The first is the Quick Assigner window to assign keywords.

The second is the Keyword Manager window to sort, separate, and apply keywords to categories.

That’s exactly what’s missing in iPhoto. In fact, Keyword Manager has many of the little touches that iPhoto doesn’t, which may be why managing keywords in iPhoto is painful.

I tried Keyword Manager and I like it. It has auto completion. It handles hundreds and hundreds of keywords (try that in iPhoto).

It allows grouping and categorizing of keywords.

So, what’s the problem, Jack? Keyword Manager costs a whopping $19. The family license is a steep $45.

Sorry, but that just seems to be too much money, especially since all of iLife ‘06 only costs $60 more.

It’s not that I won’t buy Keyword Manager. I need it. I want it. It has features Apple should have in iPhoto anyway.

I think $19 is too much, though I’ve bough other Mac applications that are not as elegant or as easily integrated.

Yes, I know Keyword Managaer will save me a few hours of tedious keyword entry in iPhoto. Yes, I of all people, should know that time is money.

So, what’s the real problem, Jack?

I have this growing list of Mac utilities I’ve already purchased, and another list of Mac utilities on my continually update To-Buy List and the price tags are adding up.

Windows users spend mucho bucks on anti-virus software, spyware deleting software, security software, and every add-on you can imagine that has little to do with fun or productivity.

Mac users spend mucho bucks on software that’s fun to use, easy to use, and does the job.

So, why am I so upset at my growing list of utilities I have and the growing list of utilities I want?

Update - I bought Keyword Manager anyway; grumbles notwithstanding. This is a slick little application which actually makes inserting keywords into iPhoto a snap. I’m so easy. If my Mac were a closet it would be filled to the top.