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When Phil Schiller unveiled the new Faces features in iLife ‘09 at the Macworld Expo 2009 keynote, my first thought was of my wife. “It’s going to confuse her with the wrong person,” I thought, “and I’ll have to hear about it for the next three weeks.” Well, that wasn’t the case. iPhoto ‘09 seemed to understand the problems it could cause and decided to err on the side of caution when seeking her face in my iPhoto library. But is it easier to identify door knobs than my wife’s face?

Seriously, Apple? The door knob? I can understand confusing a couple of faces, but iPhoto looked at the door knob on the pantry door in my kitchen, and apparently saw something else. Something evil! Maybe. I’ve since looked at it closely, hoping to find a ghost or the face of Jesus or something cool like that, but no. It’s just a door knob.

I’m not sure if that’s more or less surprising than the fact that it also thinks my son’s hand is a face:

I suppose it’s possible he drew little eyes and a mouth and was doing that old hand puppet comedy bit, or maybe he caught and was throttling the Ghost of the Haunted Pantry Door Knob. I suppose I’ll just have to keep taking pictures of his hand until it either makes me laugh with funny voices or is finally freed to cross over into the light.

And speaking of ghosts, is there one hiding up here in the tree?

I’m really kind of creeped out by the thought of some face hiding in the trees above a children’s Easter egg hunt, but I’m glad iPhoto is able to find it. I now know not to go back to that Easter egg hunt this year. I also know not to buy my children Tonka trucks, because apparently they’re putting subliminal face images in their packaging.

I must admit that I really don’t see it, but I do feel a sudden urge to smoke some Marlboros, and I think I’m beginning to understand that maybe Islam is the light.

But it’s not all about finding ghosts and exposing subliminal advertising with iPhoto. It’s also about pointing out that, yes, Flash Gordon really is “just a man with a man’s courage,” and a man’s face. In the picture below, iPhoto found Flash Gordon from the comic strip on my T-shirt, then actually correctly identified him again in a different photo of me wearing the same T-shirt.

I think that’s a good thing, though. Flash has always felt like family to me, and it’s good to know I’ll be able to find him amongst photos of my family and friends.

Now, does all this mean that Apple needs to do a bit more work on iPhoto ‘09’s Faces features? Are you kidding me? This is awesome. I think they should play this up. It should find your face and ask, “Is this Johnny Depp?” It should find your wife’s butt and say, “Dude, you know you wanna tap that!” It should find your door knob and yell, “For the love of all that’s holy, don’t open that door!” I suppose that all would upset some people, but I’d get a kick out of it.

In the meantime, Flash and I have some ghosts to catch.