Do it yourself

So, for X-mass, the panda got me a nifty new camera. One of my favorite things about it is that when I connect it to the iMac, iPhoto pops up and sucks all the photos off of the camera. I didn't have to configure or install a single thing.

Except.

It only works when I'm shooting in JPEG. When I switched to RAW, suddenly iPhoto couldn't handle it. I used Image Transfer to get the files off of the camera, but no application on the computer would open them -- not even Preview or Photoshop. So I hunted around for a while and finally discovered Apple's Digital Camera RAW Support Update 1.0.1 (Universal). I had to download, unpack, install, and reboot -- and now Preview can open the CR2 files. (Photoshop had to do something similar.)

I know RAW is kind of newish, and CR2 (that's Canon's special RAW format) is even newer. But the experience was uncharacteristically confusing and unautomatic -- I've gotten a little spoiled by how Macs know what you're going to need and do it for you before you even need it.

When OSX discovered a file format that it couldn't open, I would've expected it to pop up a message saying, "I don't know what this file is. Would you like me to check and see if there's some software that I can get in order to read it?" That would've been nice.