Yeah - I abandoned iPhoto a long time ago. It's stupid.
I get photos off my phone by syncing the Camera Roll on my phone with Dropbox. Then you can just drag them off of Dropbox into your regular folder system on your iMac. Dropbox does change the file names (which is kind of annoying), but it doesn't mess with any of the regular meta data; the date the photo was taken etc. will stay intact.