Hi guys, long time since I've posted here, so please excuse me if this has been covered before. I have done a search, but haven't had much luck finding a similar thing.
I got an intel Mac a couple of Months ago (MacPro, 2x2.66GHz Dual Core, OSX 10.4.11, 4GB RAM).
Recently, Photo Mechanic (4.3.8) has been quitting on startup, and does so repeatedly. It does it when I drag and drop a folder to open, whether I double click in the PM window, or drag from the PM window left hand side into the main pane.
I'm not a "power user" of PM like a lot of other guys like the photojournalists are, so the pricetag of US$150 is pretty steep at the moment, especially with the A$ down at US0.65 at the moment, so I'm not keen on updating immediately.
Any ideas on what the issue might be? Any workarounds?
Bugger. I was hoping that wasn't the case right this moment.
I seem to have worked out what is making it more unstable. When my external LaCie HDDs are spun down, that seems to make it crash, whereas if I access them immediately prior to opening PM, and they're both spinning, then it seems OK.
Once it's open and running, then it's fine.
Oh, and the problem only started about a month ago.
It's a shame there's no upgrade discount for registered users.
Bugger. I was hoping that wasn't the case right this moment.
It's a shame there's no upgrade discount for registered users.
In fact there is an upgrade discount for registered users of Photo Mechanic. An upgrade license costs US$ 90.00. In addition to getting the latest version of Photo Mechanic with your upgrade purchase, you get any newer versions of Photo Mechanic that come out within a year of the date of your upgrade license purchase.
Hm, it seems to me that if it's running at all on your system you don't have a Power PC version, unless there's some kind of plugin emulation I don't know about for Macs. Can you confirm that you can get it to run under some conditions?
I should think that if you can get it to run then the authors owe you at least a good explanation if not a free bugfix. In my (strong) opinion you should NOT be required to pay for an upgrade because software that is supposed to be compatible with your system is flaky.
I know *I* would fix the problem or send you a new version if you reported that *my* software was not working properly on a system with which it is compatible. Software developers need to make money, for sure, but they also need to stand by their work.
I worked out how to make it run reliably. I have 2x external LaCie HDDs, which cycle down after a few minutes of idle time. If they're cycled down, when PM tries to access them, they have to spin up, and that's when the problem happens. If I make them spin up before starting PM, then it runs faultlessly.
I am not entirely surprised that there are some issues, given that things have changed massively in the Mac world since I first bought PM.
Kirk, I will contact sales, but might have to wait for a while, money's a bit tight, and the A$ has tanked recently compared to the US$, so I might wait for it to recover a bit first. If only I had this problem when the A$ was at US$0.98
Interestingly Photo Mechanic was the first piece of software I use that went Universal meaning it would work on both PowerPC and Intel. I remember being very impressed with Camera Bits during the transition.
While I don't remember exact dates version 4.3.8 is pretty old at this point, last updated (and sold) in 2005 I think. By the time Apple switched to Intel, PM 4.4 was the current version and a free update was provided to make the program "Universal." I don't think there should be any expectation that they go back and update older versions. For reference 4.5.x is the current version with 4.6 in beta and due out shortly I imagine.
Eliot, depending on how often you use PM I would suggest upgrading. A current version would absolutely fly on your new machine and be noticeably faster I imagine. This is also an ideal time to upgrade because Camera Bits is offering an additional $10 off making an upgrade to 4.6 only $80 USD.
[Not affiliated with the company in any way other than being user who couldn't live without Photo Mechanic.]
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