So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Ken Ferry — Thu, 9 Aug 2007 14:46:43 -0700

I'm happy to report that I won't be updating Keyword Assistant for iLife '08 for one reason: The native keyword interface in iPhoto 7 is good enough that Keyword Assistant is unnecessary! You can enter keywords by typing, the keywords autocomplete, use of a non-existent keyword will implicitly create it, and you can assign keywords for an entire album without using the mouse.

iPhoto does not cover everything that Keyword Assistant handles. Names from Address Book do not complete, scripting is not improved, and I somewhat prefer Keyword Assistant's interface in full screen mode. However, these are relatively minor issues. iPhoto is as fast as Keyword Assistant for assigning keywords[1], and it does not penalize large sets of keywords nearly so badly.

Still, if you would like to see Keyword Assistant revised for iPhoto 7, let me know.

Thank you to all who used this program over the years, to all who wrote in with nice notes, complaints, and feature requests, and especially to those who helped with testing, localization, and artwork. Later!

[1]: Okay, almost as fast as Keyword Assistant. Someone pointed out that iPhoto doesn't prioritize completions by most recent use. http://bugreport.apple.com

Keyword Assistant Updates

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish