Q: Don't give up on Aperture

I heard a few rumours about a year before the announcement that the next version of Aperture was going to be amazing. (from people that had apparently seen it).

So they did put a lot of work into Aperture behind the scenes that never saw the light of day.

 

Maybe it was a back yard deal between Adobe and Apple, you guys kill flash (source of most Safari and Mac crashes) and we will pull Aperture...

We don't know for sure what happened, but I have other information to share from reading almost anything about Aperture all over the web throughout the years. Here's my take:

- It was often rumored that Apertures codebase was some kind of a mess. If that is true, it is even more amazing how fast it performed esp. in later versions with huge libraries. No other tool right now comes even close. BUT a messy codebase is always a great incentive to pull the plug for a software manufacturer and then the question is always "Now what?". Re-Write from the ground up 'ala Final Cut X or "so long"?

- It was also often rumored, that Aperture was a pet project by the master, SJ, himself. Nobody dared to question its existence as long as the master was alive and when the master was gone, the gloves came off.

- Look at the direction Apple was going in recent years. I don't think people like Phil Schiller do really understand the needs of pro photographers and see two tools (iPhoto and Aperture) with - on the surface - about 70% functionality overlap. So the answer to the earlier question "Now what?" was easy: merge them into one tool, shed all the complex pro features nobody really understands and focus on functionality that is able to handle one bazillion selfies from the billions of iPhones sold. Thus "Photos" was born.

That's all there is to it, really. Apple is too rich and too powerful to need any trades and deals with Adobe. If they wanted to, they could have bought Adobe at any time in the past right after breakfast, close it down and call it a day.

What does Photos have to do with this, it is not (and never was) a replacement for Aperture, it is the replacement for iPhoto. Aperture has not been replaced, it has ceased to be.

In the opinion of Apple it might be a replacement for iPhoto but personally I don't see it as such.

That is the intention, but it is already way better than iPhoto was in my opinion.

I suppose that is great for you. For me personally, I find both iPhoto and Photos to a waste with all of their gimmicks that I find to be useless.

Being better than iPhoto does not mean that it is good, merely better than the baseline.

What does Photos have to do with this, it is not (and never was) a replacement for Aperture, it is the replacement for iPhoto. Aperture has not been replaced, it has ceased to be.

You either did not read or not understand my text above.

I read and understood it just fine, its not Rocket Science after all.

I read all your post and this I disagree with:

I don't think people like Phil Schiller do really understand the needs of pro photographers

Sure they do, they just don't see a need to develop software for this market anymore. There are alternatives and developing Aperture didn't sell any hardware - which FCP does - and Apple are in the business of selling hardware.

Then added to that is the change of focus to the Cloud. The old strategy of the Mac at the centre of everything is over. Now the Cloud is. So, Apple are giving away apps that work with the Cloud so that they can see an ecosystem of hardware - Mac, iPhone, iPad, etc. The Cloud at the centre making the data available to all the hardware. And Apple are in the business of selling hardware.

With the exception of the Final Cut/Logic apps, all of Apple's software is the same: Capable enough and feature rich enough for most people most of the time. Page is great for drafting a letter or a CV. Want to do a 100,000 word thesis with tables, footnotes and references? Buy something more powerful. Same with Numbers, same with iMovie, same with Photos.

Only in the case of iMovie does Apple actually make the pro level app. That's to sell MacPros.

So, if you want an app more capable than Photos you need to find a 3rd party app - they are out there - and accept that Aperture is over. I miss it too, but when you look at Apple's strategy it makes no sense for them.

How is FCPX any better at selling hardware than Aperture? I still run FCPX just on a 2009 27" iMac. If anything, Aperture (which I use extensively) gave me a much bigger incentive to upgrade my hardware than FCPX (which I use sparingly.) If Apple hadn't cancelled Aperture, I would have replaced that seven year old iMac. Now, I may never replace it at all, sticking with my rMBP as my single computer.

When they cancelled Aperture, Apple abandoned a legion of loyal pro and prosumer photographers. One of the results of this is that a large portion of those customers have had little choice but to flee to Adobe Lightroom. At first glance you might think this doesn't hurt Apple. But aside from the enormous frustration and sense of betrayal those customers felt towards Apple, they are now unable to use their new photo app, Lightroom, with Apple's cloud photo service. Instead, Adobe is now pushing Lightroom users to subscribe to their own cloud hosting service. In fact they just released an Apple TV Lightroom app to allow them to view their Adobe-hosted Lightroom photo library.

I would think this would be troublesome for Apple, if for no other reason than the fact that they're increasingly becoming dependent on cloud service subscriptions for revenue growth and they've given away thousands or millions of their most devout customers to Adobe.

1 hardware upgrade in 7 years, I do more than that without Aperture. It's hardly compelling now. is it?

In addition to the iMac (which I have now decided not to replace) I own a 2013 15" rMBP. I've typically replaced my MacBooks every three to four years. This is in addition to buying a new iPhone every year, and a new iPad every three or four.

Bottom line is that instead of regularly upgrading two mid-$2000 Apple computers on a regular basis, now I will only be replacing one, and probably less frequently at that. I already pay for Dropbox which provides far more reliable and flexible cloud storage than iCloud Drive. And now I'm facing little choice but to move my image library to Lightroom, which in turn will require me to subscribe to Adobe's cloud service. The more I think about this, the less reason I see to continue paying for iCloud Drive or iCloud Photo Library.

While I'm at it, this makes me start questioning my other commitments to Apple, including my Apple Music and iTunes Match subscriptions. All my friends use Spotify, so I'm seriously considering whether there's any worthwhile benefit to continue paying a company that doesn't particularly appreciate me as a customer anymore.

So as a result of Apple's abandonment of Aperture, they will lose thousands of dollars in computer sales and likely also a cloud service and music subscriber. If any significant number of people are in a similar situation as I, this will bite Apple in the *** down the road as they find it increasingly difficult to further grow the iPhone business.

People have been forecasting doom for Apple for years, taken a look at them lately?

Aperture users seem to have an inflated sense of themselves and their needs, but we will see.

"People have been forecasting doom for Apple for years, taken a look at them lately?"

As a matter of fact, I have.

Apple Reports Yet Another Quarter Of Declining iPhone Sales

http://www.forbes.com/sites/aarontilley/2016/07/26/apple-third-quarter-earnings- iphone/#6f9c797b6d80

Apple Faces Massive Challenges As It Tries to Crack India's Market

http://fortune.com/2016/05/24/india-market-apple-tim-cook/

China Sales Slide Eats Into Apple Revenue

http://www.wsj.com/articles/china-sales-slide-eats-into-apple-revenue-1461741566

Apple are the largest consumer electronics company in the world, that's good enough for me.