Replacement to Aperture

Sorry to hear that. Having worked with with users of the servers I supported that had to migrate to new software I can relate on how huge a task it can be. This is especially true when the need to migrate is sprung on you out of the blue as Apple has done here.

From what you are describing, it sounds like you may want to look at Phase One Media Pro. It is based on code that they bought from Microsoft called Microsoft Expression Media which Phase One has rewritten to run on both Windows and OS X. It is rated as a commercial grade digital asset management system. I am hoping that might be of some help in your search for solution.

I'm already looking at it and Lightroom. Media Pro I can remember looking into it in its early form, I picked Aperture. Aperture has always been leagues ahead on workflow for sorting storing and delivery.

I don't think many realised what Aperture was, if ever you saw a review it was always just comparing output against Adope or Phase, I never saw a review showing how to use what it was so much better at than anything else out there.

So Kevin, what's wrong with doing what I've already been forced to do with FCP Studio?…….

I simply have not upgraded the OSX on my Mac beyond 10.8.5. because that version of OSX still allows FCP Studio to run just fine, as it does with Aperture as well as a couple of other "passed by" Applications. The machine they run on is late 2009 / early 2010 and it's still functioning just fine.

If and when I feel I need to upgrade to Yosemite or whatever else comes down the road then perhaps it'll be time to buy a new Mac, but I'll always be sure to keep the older one if only just to run the Applications that have been cast aside or outdated by Apple or whoever else.

It's always made sense to me anyway if you're using a computer professionally, for editing or whatever, to have as little else on the machine other than the Applications you need for the tasks in hand and that's all, everything else junked.

Aperture, if it ain't broke, which it's not if it still runs on Yosemite or prior, then just keep using it and don't change up the OS,

As I said, that's worked for me with FCP Studio and there's no reason why it cannot do the same for Aperture too…...

Good luck anyway.

Personally I see that as an extremely shortsighted way to run a business. I always argued with manager who wanted to do that when I was working in IT. Eventually that solution will stop working and then your are in a much deeper hole. From past experience I know this to be true because the ones that stuck to their guns and ignored the problem were alway hit with larger problems in the future.

I see what Kevin is doing as the correct way to handle this and that is to develop a plan of how he will proceed with his business.

Putting your head in the sand and saying there is no problem as loudly as you can will in fact not make the problem go away.

Hi Allen, I don't disagree at all with what you say, but I'm certainly not "sticking my head in the sand" pretending that there's no problem here with what we've been dealt by Apple, yet again….

What I am saying is that so far with FCP this "solution" has worked fine for me and many others including pro' edit houses that I know and use. Is it an ideal solution? No of course it isn't, but I am still able to use FCP as I have for many years now and yes it still produces content and output that is current to my needs and perhaps this methodology could do the same too in regards to some Aperture users too, particularly those who regret it's imminent "loss".

Of course down the road things can and will change as technology evolves but there's no reason to panic yet while there's perfectly acceptable ways of going on with one's workflow choices.

Peter's solution maybe shortsighted in the long run, but it's certainly not unheard of in business, how many companies stuck with windows XP long after its demise, in fact the large company (1000+ employees ) I work for upgrade to windows server R2 last year, a 10 years old OS, and our mainframe software used by virtually ever person and the whole company relies on is IBM AS400 from 1988.

There was a report that banks here in the UK have backend computer software running in pounds shillings and pence (which we officially abandoned in 1971) The old adage "if it aint broke don't fix it" seems to apply here.

Personally I'll be sticking with Mavericks and Aperture for the foreseeable future.

You can keep using Aperture until Photos has been updated enough to have all the features that you want. The first version of Photos will be missing some things from Aperture and then they will add those features back in after users complain. Just keep using Aperture until Photos is ready for you.

The same thing kind of happened with Final Cut Pro X. It was missing a lot of pro features but eventually they added them back in.

I'm really not sure why Apple does it this way. Any normal company would not anger and upset its users like this, but clearly Apple doesn't make its bread and butter from Aperture, and feels its more important to build an integrated platform around Photos across iOS and Mac. Personally I wish they would explain themselves better and explain to users why it's OK for us to just lose all these great features out of a program that we loved. I wish they would explain what their thinking is, what their intentions are.

They did the same thing with the iWork applications, where they removed a lot of features from Pages and made a dumbed down version so that everything could sync properly across all devices. Because you can't have extra features on the desktop version or else iCloud syncing would get all messed up. They needed to move to a unified code base.

I'm sure inside Apple they are probably rewriting all their apps into Swift and basing them on the newest APIs etc. They are a rich enough and big enough company to actually just rewrite their programs entirely from scratch and they are thinking from a somewhat idealistic software development, cloud syncing perspective.

Meanwhile regular users are trucking along with good old Aperture 3 and feeling left behind and thrown out in the cold. Apple says nothing about why it left features out or what people are supposed to do, and just like they angered many filmmakers with the Final Cut Pro debacle, now they want to anger the pro photographers who have possibly invested tens of thousands of hours into building up Aperture libraries and maintaining them.

All Apple would have to do is just come out and say, "Hey here's our gameplan... we aim to add all the same features as Aperture by the middle of 2016, so if you need all that, then wait until then," or something. But no, they say nothing, because Apple always says nothing, and just does whatever it does, often times, leaving us to wonder what in the heck they are doing, and why they are doing it.

Cleary they could afford to keep Aperture going forever, they're the richest company in the world! Why would they therefore abandon users, other than simply not caring at all about customers and what customers want? Why not explain themselves? I don't understand either. I wish someone could get an explanation on this out of Tim Cook though.

You can keep using Aperture until Photos has been updated enough to have all the features that you want.

There is simply no guarantee that will happen. Nor, if it does happen, when it will catch up. Pages still hasn't caught up with the older version... What do you do if the next version of OS X won't run Aperture, or if you need to get a new machine that won't run Aperture?

You're right Terence. That's why it's so infuriating, the more I think about this whole situation. I've stuck by Apple for a long time… a lot of us have. We've defended Apple through all of its hard times and various mistakes over the years. We recommended Apple to our friends and family and coworkers and colleagues. We told people, "If you're going to put your eggs in a basket, Apple is the best basket."

When they hosed the Final Cut Pro people, we all kind of watched like it was some kind of train wreck or car accident, but most of us didn't use FCP and so we just kind of shrugged and said amongst ourselves, "Well, they're moving away from the pro market, I guess." Many people and businesses were completely sideswiped by this and it really hurt some of them because of how much they had invested into Apple at the time.

Then we saw what happened with Pages and we thought, "Hmmm." This hits a little bit closer to home, but still, most of us didn't use Pages for much because we'd been Word users for so long, or maybe Nisus, etc. There were a lot of other options.

But I know a LOT of photographers who bought a Mac *specifically* to use Aperture. People who have spent **** near a decade investing countless hundreds, thousands of hours into their Aperture libraries. They *depend* on Aperture for their *livelihoods.* And now it's being simply dropped, with no fanfare, and NO confidence that what will "replace" it will be remotely acceptable as a replacement, now, or ever.

It all leaves us to wonder, what has Apple actually become? What kind of unthinking monster is this? It's no longer the warm friend we once knew, who seemed to read our minds and know what we really wanted, deep down inside, and then made it for us like a magical high tech Santa Clause. It has become that disappointing girlfriend who always gives you the crappiest gifts at Christmas and breaks something nice of yours on a regular basis. Sure, she's really pretty an hot, and knows everybody wants her, but that's precisely why she doesn't really care anymore about trying to really impress you. She knows you'll never leave. She just doesn't get it anymore.

But doesn't there come a time when enough is enough? I mean, when do we finally wake up and say to ourselves, "This is not Apple anymore… not the Apple we once knew. The old Apple would NEVER do this to people. Would it?" But the more I thought about that, the more I realized, "Yes, it would."

Apple was always this way. That's why we're not using MacPaint and MacWrite anymore, yet MS Word is still MS Word and Photoshop is still Photoshop. Because Apple is an ADHD company that gets fascinated with some software project and makes it, and makes it great, but eventually because that's not how it makes its bread and butter, that project eventually becomes the victim of the corporate machinery as the developers on that project get promoted to bigger and better, more important things at Apple, and soon enough the programmers who take over probably don't understand the codebase or really care about the project, because for them it's also just a stepping stone to something bigger and better within Apple.

Didn't they try to solve this by spinning off Claris, only to gobble it back up again at some point? I don't know.

At the end of the day, only Apple can change Apple. If we write enough letters to them and express enough anger and consternation about this, maybe this time, for once, they will listen. I mean, after all, Final Cut is still around, and they've added back a lot of the pro features. Logic Pro X somehow managed to avoid falling victim to the horrible trend, probably because music people are just awesome and think they already have the best jobs at Apple.

But gosh darn it, if you care about Aperture, you need to put together a protest, and go down and picket in Cupertino. I know you photographers could make a weekend junket out of it. Just think: all these photographers—people who, y'know, have lots of media connections and tons of followers online—show up at Apple and protest the demise of Aperture right on the streets of 1 Infinite Loop! **** yeah, put some pressure on 'em! I'll bet my old Mac SE/30 and IIfx collection that Apple would cave to such a demonstration in less than a day, and publicly commit to making Photos have EVERY feature of Aperture… AND THEN SOME.

Because at the end of the day, Apple isn't that snotty type of company who is too good to cater to the needs of the many. They're just that ADHD friend who gets caught up in whatever he's doing and doesn't realize that three years went by and Swift! We need to redo the whole thing in Swift for iCloud! Yeah woot hax0rz! Oh wait the photographers are ******.

Apple are happily ditching the loyal users, the ones that bought it because it was the best system. Those of us that took a chance on Apple when everyone said it's going bust are being dumped for the gizmo kids, instagram, twitter and Facebook users are wanted more than those of us that actually use a computer as a tool to create.

Apple was the best tool, the OS didn't get in the way the hardware just worked. I've never seen the point in building your own computer, just the same as I don't build my own Camera or washing machine, I'm just not interesting in learning to do that. There is so much I still need to learn about my job and I've been doing that for nearly 40 years. Apple supplied the best solution in a box, you knew exactly what you were getting, no nasty surprises.

Apple is just becoming a conduit for data, a hub to distribute phone snaps, chat and watch things on, Apple do not appear to care about the content creators regarding software. It is willing to sacrifice its long earned reputation and standing, its branding that has takenyears of service, support and vision to build, just so the fickle can share trivia easily.

Not sure what happens if Apples move into electric vehicles turns out to be a flop, that would upset the shareholders. Having a dedicated grassroots customer base that values Apple for what it has always been good at could be needed to keep banging the drum, like we did during the war of the clones and finacial difficulties. I'm not sure there will be anyone around to beat the drum.......or a drum to beat.

Not true. Samsung Dell Acer etc are hardware companies, Apple sold an intergrated system. Its what made them better than the rest. you bought Apple because of the operating system as much as anything, thats how Apple pitched themselves.

Yes true. Look at the cross platform software they made... only stuff that works to sell hardware. What didn't they licence the OS? Because it exists only to sell hardware. That's where they make their money. Always have.

Terence is right on. There are many logical reasons that Apple builds hardware that can only run their proprietary OSX. The current Retina displays on the MBP and iMac are selling very well. Most of my clients expect to see a Retina display, either on location, or in the studio, or at a prooofing-presentation. Whatever image processing software is being utilized, and I use both LR and Aperture, Retina displays show more of everything 😎

Kevin Allen4 wrote:

Apple are happily ditching the loyal users, the ones that bought it because it was the best system. Those of us that took a chance on Apple when everyone said it's going bust are being dumped for the gizmo kids, instagram, twitter and Facebook users are wanted more than those of us that actually use a computer as a tool to create.

Apple was the best tool, the OS didn't get in the way the hardware just worked. I've never seen the point in building your own computer, just the same as I don't build my own Camera or washing machine, I'm just not interesting in learning to do that. There is so much I still need to learn about my job and I've been doing that for nearly 40 years. Apple supplied the best solution in a box, you knew exactly what you were getting, no nasty surprises.

Apple is just becoming a conduit for data, a hub to distribute phone snaps, chat and watch things on, Apple do not appear to care about the content creators regarding software. It is willing to sacrifice its long earned reputation and standing, its branding that has takenyears of service, support and vision to build, just so the fickle can share trivia easily.

Not sure what happens if Apples move into electric vehicles turns out to be a flop, that would upset the shareholders. Having a dedicated grassroots customer base that values Apple for what it has always been good at could be needed to keep banging the drum, like we did during the war of the clones and finacial difficulties. I'm not sure there will be anyone around to beat the drum.......or a drum to beat.

I do not share the belief that the consumerization of the Apple platform is what has led to the demise of Aperture and the gimping of Pages.

The real killer of Aperture is iCloud.

Lets go back in time to June 6, 2011, to the very last thing Steve Jobs ever said on that stage:

Steve Jobs said (emphasis mine):

I pick up my iPad and it doesn’t have that song on it. So I have to sync my iPhone to my Mac. Then I have to sync my other devices to the Mac to get that song but then they’ve deposited some photos on the Mac so I have to sync the iPhone again with the Mac to get those photos and keeping those devices in sync is driving us crazy. So we’ve got a great solution for this problem. And we think this solution is our next big insight. Which is we’re going to demote the PC and the Mac to just be a device. Just like an iPhone, an iPad or an iPod Touch. And we’re going to move the digital hub, the center of your digital life, into the cloud.

Because all these new devices have communications built into them. They can all talk to the cloud whenever they want. And so now, if I get something on my iPhone it’s sent up to the cloud immediately. Let’s say I take some pictures with it, those pictures are in the cloud, and they are now pushed down to my devices completely automatically. And now everything’s in sync with me not even having to think about it. I don’t even have to take the devices out of my pocket. I don’t have to be near my Mac or PC.

Now some people think the cloud is just a hard disk in the sky. Right, and you take a bunch of stuff and you put it in your Dropbox or your iDisk or whatever and it transfers it up to the cloud and stores it and then you drag whatever you want back out on your other devices.

We think it’s way more than that and we call it iCloud. Now iCloud stores your content in the Cloud and wirelessly pushes it to all your devices. So it automatically uploads it, stores it and automatically pushes it to all your other devices. But also, it’s completely integrated with your apps and so everything happens automatically and there’s nothing new to learn. It’s just all works. It just works.

Fulfilling Steve's last words has been very difficult and plagued by problem after problem for Apple, its developers (see this site for technical details), and users. For the first two years of iCloud, syncing document changes was broken. Third-party devs could never get it to work, and Apple's iWork customers experienced many nightmares of corrupted and deleted documents (just google "I lost all my pages documents").

iOS 7 promised to fix iCloud syncing the same month Ed Snowden made his revelations. Devs were scared to death to trust Apple that iCloud was fixed, and the public's distaste for the cloud intensified. But Apple was not about to give up on Jobs' final WWDC promises. Starting with Pages and Numbers in iOS 7, Apple addressed iCloud syncing problems by making sure the Mac and iOS versions of its own apps shared the exact same features, to avoid issues with syncing. Apple needed to do this because it had to prove to both developers and users that iCloud syncing was actually possible.

The real question I don't understand is, why did Apple choose to remove features from the Mac version instead of adding them to the iOS version? Why didn't they warn users about this before upgrading? Why have they still not fully rectified this situation? Why are they now seemingly poised to repeat this step as they get rid of Aperture and iPhoto, replacing it with Photos?

It's not like the sales performance of the Mac and iPhone has left Apple without the resources to focus on restoring Pages back to having all the features that it once had. I think this is simply due to an organizational problem within Apple and the only solution is going to be a massive public outcry from their customer base. Write letters. Send feedback. Make phone calls. Make a stink. Pressure them. I think that's the only thing that we can do.

That being said, I highly respect Apple for not giving up on Steve's vision, even as users kept increasingly relying on Dropbox and users have increasingly become wary of the cloud in the wake of the Target hack, Heartbleed, and "the fappening," etc.

Because what if Steve was right? I'm going to re-enter the reality distortion field and imagine a future where the Mac and iOS versions of Photos will be better than Aperture in every way. When I put photos on my iPad, they magically show up on my Mac Pro a few minutes later, RAWs, JPEGs and all. My Google fiber connection and unlimited data 5G LTEX connection make this possible. I pull out my iPad Pro 2 and whiz through 8k video like butter. Government agents try to access my iCloud but it's encrypted so well that it would take a million years to decode. My most sensitive photos don't even go to iCloud but remain stored in a local drive with retina, voice, face, and fingerprint locking, on top of passwords, yet they still sync seamlessly with my devices.

Is that a realistic vision? Or just a dream? How much longer will I have to truck along with OS X 10.10, Aperture 3, and Ubiquity mode on iCloud, before I can finally go to Photos and not lose any features at all? More importantly why would professional photographers wait an unspecified amount of time for an unconfirmed dream?

Upon further reflection, I might speculate the real reason Apple cuts features from products due to a software development strategy that has seemed to become endemic to the entire software development industry today: the design principles espoused in "The Lean Startup" and the "Agile manifesto." This way approach almost always gets implemented can be summed up as, "Make quick efforts in short bursts to meet minimal goals, then wait for people to complain before making more of an effort. If you make tons of money and don't get many complaints, move on to the next product."

The problem is that in Agile you're supposed to collaborate closely with the customer (end users) to make sure they're actually happy, but that's become an implementation detail. Apple's secretive and closed nature is the opposite of collaboration. Therefore if indeed Apple is trying to do Agile internally, it's going to fail miserably, and the products we're seeing is what we're going to end up with.

Because Agile is a totally different philosophy from how the original Mac was developed. That team, as Steve said, tried to "make the computer that we ourselves would want." Apple needs to return to the perfectionistic approach of its past, and weed out any "Lean Startup" crap, which is for startups. As for Agile, I really wish Apple would actually follow the "close collaboration with users" thing, but lets face it, Apple's engineers do not collaborate with the userbase. There's not a single post from an Apple engineer anywhere on these forums. They're extremely insular. They view us as a source of information. They leave us feeling alone and in the dark, then they make decisions that anger, hurt, and mystify us.

But I don't think they mean to intentionally anger, hurt, and mystify us. It's just caused by lack of communication. That's why I say the only course of action we have is to protest. Write letters. Send feedback. Make phone calls. Make a stink. Pressure them. I think that's the only thing that we can do.