Mr. Jingles,
Sorry I didn't mean to troll, be inflammatory, rude, offensive, off-topic or otherwise disruptive. I have about 33,000 photos and I had problems with iPhoto importing all the photos on my new Mac Mini Duo Core. Shoebox has many postitive reviews and I purchased a copy of Shoebox Express ($29.99) to see if it might help organize the photos. The first problem I had was getting a license number. I think I initially installed a trial version. When I went to upgrade the trial version, I paid for the program and then received an email stating that I needed to send my computer number to get a license number. I send the computer number right away and waited for a reply. This was on either a Sunday when I have time to work with the photos. I waited for a reply. I sent another email requesting a reply because I wanted to work on it that day. I waited about 2 hours and did not receive a license number. I decided I might not received a reply until Monday so, I tried buying a copy a different way. I figured it would be a simple matter to get a refund for the unused license. This time the purchase prompted me for the computer number when I purchased the Shoebox Express. I paid another $29.99 and received a license number.
The Shoebox Express software is only used for up to 10,000 photos. When I started using the program it kept bombing out, sometimes I would get the dialogue box to send the error to Apple and sometimes it would just quit and I would have to relaunch it. I contacted Kavasoft for support but, I did not receive any reply. After working with it for about 4 hours, I decided the problem was I had too many photos. support I might have been wrong about that being the problem but, I was anxious to find a solution for organizing my photos on the Mac Mini. I went ahead and purchase the Shoebox Pro program. I shelled out another $40 and received a license number for Shoebox Pro. I started working with it and continued to get the error messages.
The next Tuesday I requested a refund of the version that I did not receive a license number for. I never did hear from Kavasoft about the original note I sent on Sunday. The following Saturday, I still hadn't heard from Kavasoft and I was continuing to have problems. Without hearing anything from customer support in almost a week, spent $99.98, and not getting any kind of email reply, I filed a dispute with PayPal for the version that I did not get a license number for and for the other versions I did get a license for as I was dissatisfied with program not working right and not hearing from customer support for a week. Once I posted the disputes I got a reply from Kavasoft. They refunded the license for the version that I never received a key for and suggested that "If Shoebox crashes, please click the "Report" button to generate a crash report. Then email us the information that is displayed, along with any information on what you were doing when the program crashed." I agreed to continue to try to use it and send the error messages to Kavasoft for a week. I sent a few error messages to Kavasoft but, on the following Saturday I was downloading 30 new pictures I had taken and the download was very, very slow. Eventually, I needed to force quite and reboot the Mac Mini. I posted another request to refund the license fee as I was not happy with the software. I was informed "we are unable to offer a satisfaction guarantee for our software."
I have not received any messages back from the error messages I have submitted suggesting any changes that could be made to prevent the errors. While there do seem to be customers that are satisfied with the product and software I have found a site that has a number of less favorable reviews. At
Mac Update there are 14 reviews (including mine). Here is a sample of some of the user comments:
" Interesting start, but needs lots of work. It's very slow. The interface is a mess, and drawers should never be used."
" I have to agree with the last anonymous poster, the interface is a mess. Coming as it has after iPhoto 5, I wonder how many people will use this app, as most of my daily use keywords are already in iPhoto which is much faster and has editing capabilities not to mention is free."
" When you get real and drop your price to $29.99 for Pro version, I promise to buy it - for $79 this is ridiculous"
"Software is supposed to make _my_ life easier."
"Caveat Emptor!
Do not expect to get much of a response from Andrew Zamler-carhart, the developer, if you encounter the usual crashes with this product. The trial is limited enough that you won't be able to use the demo on a large enough number of photos to experience the bugs. This application has a nice user interface and is very promising. Unfortunately, until it reaches a maturity level with commercial level support and return policies for defective software, the Kavasoft products will be hard to judge before plunking down hard cash.
I would give the Kavasoft products a higher rating for stability, except for the crashes"
"As the number of my pics grew, iphoto was slower and more complicated to handle. When I found shoebox, I loved the idea, and quickly bouth the express version. Eager to start, I imported my current iphoto, created 2 atalogs (so I imported twice - that's important!), as I wanted to separate the pics "work" from "family". So I deleted some "work" pics in "family" catalog - to organize them better. Guess what? Those pics were PERMANENTLY ERASED from BOTH catalogs AND FROM IPHOTO! In case I'm missing something...
Emailed the developer - no response.
Anyone w/ advice? some pics were backed up, but the recent good once - not yet... I never would've thought that importing would mean not copying.
Sorry for "creaming" but I'm devastated... "
You're right Mr. Jingles, my original post was pointed and did not provide information that would be helpful for Josh ("Kirkman"). I hope this additional information helps better explain my railing on Kavasoft. For what this software does, a premium price is being paid. There is no reason to have unresponsive customer support, a program that shuts down with no explaination, and to not be happy with the value it provides. Josh or others reading this may become Shoebox evangelists but, this clearly didn't work for me.
I have learned that PayPal will only deal with claims dealing with physical goods. Next time I will use a Visa card rather than PayPal for paying for software to leave an opportunity to better resolve issues with the purchase not being satisfactory. Kavasoft only offers payment by PayPal and Kagi. I was not familar with Kagi. I started to suggest it might be smarter to process payment through Kagi but,
this blog makes me wonder about that.
Not only that, but you revived two threads about the subject that have been dead for over a year.
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