Bugs & Fixes: Apple's advice on iLife '09 bugs

It's true: New software ships with bugs-bugs that the developer knew were there even before shipping the product. In fact, the vendor may include a "Known Bugs" list with the software. This should not come as a shock, nor is it something to be alarmed about. Today's software is sufficiently complex that almost no program is ever completely bug-free. At some point, a developer has to pick a cut-off point and say "This is good enough; this is when we ship. Whatever bugs remain, we'll fix later."

For Apple products, if you want to know what bugs Apple knew were there even before shipping (or at least what bugs Apple is willing to admit it knew about), check Apple's Knowledge Base a day or two after a product ships.

I did my usual check of the Knowledge Base after iLife '09 was released a couple of weeks ago. What follows here are four bug reports that caught my eye. In the two iPhoto examples, Apple offers effective workarounds. In the two examples involving iWeb, Apple's answer is more the equivalent of the old Rodney Dangerfield joke: "I told the doctor it hurts when I do this. So he told me 'Don't do that.'"

iPhoto '09 edits and Flickr

New in iPhoto '09, you can directly publish photos to a Flickr account. However, after doing so, if you edit a shared photo in iPhoto and resync with Flickr, the photo in Flickr is not updated to reflect the edits.

To fix this, you need to delete the photo from your Flickr web album in iPhoto. (This won't delete the photo from your iPhoto Library, just from its inclusion in the Flickr album.) Next, edit the photo. When done, add it back to the album and republish.

In the unlikely case that your Flickr album contains only one photo, you'll need to delete the entire album, edit the photo, and create a new album.

iPhoto '09 and third party plug-ins

After upgrading to iPhoto '09 from a previous version of iPhoto, you may find that pre-existing third-party plug-ins no longer work. The solution is simple: reinstall the plug-ins after completing the iPhoto '09 upgrade.

iWeb '09 problems with Modern Frame

If you select Modern Frame as the theme for your Web site and select Center as the text alignment for placeholder text on the page, all will appear fine-so far. However, after publishing the site, problems may crop up, such as text that has shrunk in size or the text box itself shifting upwards.

Currently, Apple has no solution for this. Rather, it bluntly states, "To resolve this issue, do not use centered text or select another iWeb theme."

iWeb '09 fails to upload content

iWeb's built-in FTP function may have trouble uploading content to some Windows-based FTP servers, resulting in a message that says "Testing failed" or "Can't publish testsite." This can happen despite you having entered all settings correctly.

There is no fix as of yet. Instead, Apple advises that you "publish to a local folder and then use a third-party FTP client application, such as Panic Transmit, to post your locally published site."