Today it's Apple's turn

After my recent rant at Microsoft for their appalling Windows 8 OS which I had to accept on my wife's new laptop it's Apple's turn in my gun today.
I do not use iPhoto nowadays as I now have Lightroom as my cataloguing system but when I set up my Mac I transferred thousands of images into iPhoto initially.
I had big computer problems today.I ran out of hard drive space -- not surprising given the rate I download images etc- and this day has been coming for a few months but I have been managing it but today I downloaded some big files which filled the drive and then it locked up. And then I found there was not enough space to work any of the apps I need to clear it.
Also I found that the iPhoto trash bin had 16000 images in it -- I had not cleared it for 3 years .I thought it was the same as the computer trash bin which I clear regularly.I tried to empty it but it would not empty and just kept going and going and going.So I Googled it and found that there is a well known problem with the iPhoto trash bin which means it will not clear if it has more than about 100 photos in it.Apple have apparently known about the problem for years and still have not fixed it which really is a disgrace and there is no easy workaround.
So I will have to restore all those 16000 deleted images and I face the daunting task of deleting them again a hundred at a time and then emptying the trash can for each batch of 100.I had better find a monk to do this .Problem is that I have to do it otherwise the hard drive space will not free up.The alternative is to move the iPhoto library to a remote hard drive which I may well attempt as I do have everything well backed up.
The lesson is if you use iPhoto check the trash can and if it's got more than 100 images in it it may be a case of hard luck -Apple doesn't care.

Since I wrote this I have spent a few hours unravelling my iPhoto library( another Apple walled garden full of strange files ) and losing all the images and then restoring it with Time Machine and managing to get the iPhoto trash can to clear itself eventually.I seem to have lost a few photos along the way but nothing that matters.If at first you don't suceed try,try again but make sure that you have it all backed up before you do the try bit.