Q: Replacement to Aperture

Most of my clients expect to see a Retina display, either on location, or in the studio, or at a prooofing-presentation.

That would not work in our organization.  We are only allowed to purchase laptops with built-in optical drives.  So, that leaves us with just one MacBook Pro option that does NOT have the retina display.

Although, one could certainly make an operating system "break" older software to force people to "move along".

iOS 8 did that to iPhoto 2 on iOS. Without any warning in the iOS 8 release notes, iPhoto turned out to be incompatible, without an upgrade available. After upgrading to iOS8 could he surprised iPhoto users migrate the iPhoto Libraries Photos, but it was a lossy transition. The photo books and web journals could not be migrated, and Photos on iOS is still a poor substitute for iPhoto iOS: it does not show the keywords or titles, no brushed adjustments, no Info panel with meta data at all.

I've written elsewhere on this forum that I think Apple are working to a simple and quite obvious plan. Make a suite of "good-enough-for-most-people" software and give it away for free. That software works across the ecosystem. Start a document on your Mac, edit it on your phone. Open it in a web browsers on Windows and keep it all in sync. That's quite a trick when it works. If you're a more demanding user then you need to go to 3rd party makers - so Pages is good for simple documents. Writing a Phd? Get Word or Nisus. Shooting family Jpegs with a point and shoot or a phone, use Photos on the device and your Mac. Edit, organise, tag once  and it's all available for everywhere. But if you're a more demanding user? Lightroom. Photoshop, Capture One etc

There are two advantages for Apple: they get a good suite of middle of the road software that's integrated across their ecosystem. That sells hardware. They also get a healthy market for 3rd party developers who they are facilitating and not directly competing with. For the average user, they get great value in their software and a healthy ecosystem in their devices. Apple don't have the expense of a fractured software programme.

For the demanding user? Well you get the same as other ecosystems. You want better than what comes with the machine? Buy it.

It makes sense.

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.

You have to be realistic here. This forum has more than a million members. It's designed for users to talk to users. You're told that upfront. It's quite clear. There is no way that Engineering  can have a coherent conversation with a million people. Most people on the forum simply would not have the vocabulary to interact meaningfully with developers. Most probably wouldn't want to.

They're extremely insular. They view us as a source of information.

Well you have no idea what conversations they may (or may not) have on other fora - beta testers, developers, focus groups and whatever. They don't really view this forum as a source of information. The signal to noise ratio (like this post) is far too low.

But I don't think they mean to intentionally anger, hurt, and mystify us. It's just caused by lack of communication.

Is there any other large multi-national corporation that does meaningfully converse with its customers?

You have to be realistic here. This forum has more than a million members.

On coherent conversations with software engineers & the forum:

fwiw, Its hard enough to wade through 5 pages of conversation that is on topic!

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Trying to assess which way to go from Aperture is a problem.

I suppose one cannot expect a good comparison between the alternatives on this forum.

Aperture worked rather well, excepting the library overhead - and could drop me to Photoshop.

Asset management, with some robust editing features is the need. The asset manager/editor that came with my cameras was no solution. Lightroom methodology doesn’t appeal to me very much in the versions I tried.

I don’t want another dead-ended piece of software. Did that enough with Apple OS 7, 8, 9, and less with OS X.

I don’t want to spend a long time intricately assessing several application options on my own, but it looks as though I (we) have to.

Well that sounds like a particularly dumb requirement. Why is it mandatory to have an optical drive? When Apple stops selling them, will you have to switch to Dells? Maybe you should have a requirement to ONLY buy systems with VGA ports

don’t want another dead-ended piece of software. Did that enough with Apple OS 7, 8, 9, and less with OS X.

I don’t want to spend a long time intricately assessing several application options on my own, but it looks as though I (we) have to.

None of us do, but I really don't think we have any choice but to assess the alternatives for your own personal situation. I've gone to LR, but I need an app that works for my situation and that's the closest to ideal for me. Thus far I've found the asset management to be different but not much different from a referenced library in Aperture. In truth the processing has got well ahead while Aperture stagnated. But that's my situation. Your needs might be different.

Why is it mandatory to have an optical drive? When Apple stops selling them, will you have to switch to Dells? Maybe you should have a requirement to ONLY buy systems with VGA port

I am involved in the movie industry.  The majority of movies are distributed on optical media.  Yes, I have seen some people on flights with external DVD drives duct-taped to the bottoms of their MacBooks. Not something I care to do.

When Apple stops selling them, will you have to switch to Dells?

We will probably switch to Toshiba, not a fan of Dell.   There was a time in the past when Apple dominated movie editing and screenwriting, this is no longer the case.  Switching to Windows is NOT what I want to, but it would not be difficult at this point.

Maybe you should have a requirement to ONLY buy systems with VGA ports

I do enjoy analogies, I'm not understanding that one.

I do enjoy analogies, I'm not understanding that one.

Something abut being tied to dying or dead technologies...

It is such a shame that Apple has completely lost touch with its professional base since Steve passed on.

They had the best product on the market and just walked away from it.

Did they ever think of selling it to some company that actually had an interest in the professional market?

Personally I hate the Lightroom interface. Capture One is more of an option. One other thing that Aperture does really well is to sync a smart album to an iPad. You can just create a keyword for certain images, move it to a Smart Album and then sync and you are off to the customer. I am sure that Photos will do that but probably not much else.

>>  Something abut being tied to dying or dead technologies...  <<

I didn't think he could be talking about the 700,000,000 DVDs and Blu-rays sold in 2014.

“In any forecast, physical goods will remain the largest piece,”  “It’s a very important revenue stream. There is no indication that digital is going to surpass physical. We need to grow the entire pie.”

Bill Clark, Anchor Bay Entertainment.

It is such a shame that Apple has completely lost touch with its professional base since Steve passed on.

Apple's target market is moving rapidly towards younger, less experienced customers. So from a business standpoint I can understand what they're doing.

However, the professional user (a.k.a. power user) has a great deal of influence on what the new user, or young user purchases.  I would argue that keeping the professional / Prosumer customers happy makes good business sense.

I have successfully influenced hundreds of people to Macintosh and other Apple products.  Most of these people are using iPhoto not Aperture.  However, if I was not such a fan of Apple products most of those people would still be stuck in the Windows world. Yes, the professional is a small market share, but we significantly help steer the aircraft carrier which is Apple.

“In any forecast, physical goods will remain the largest piece,”

And the Titanic was the biggest ship too.

(Sorry couldn't resist that...)

I agree, Aperture is about asset management. I teach and have about 20 photographers who shoot during the year. They have daily assignments and edit on the 12 Mac we have for Photo. They then export the images as a library and I import them into a master computer and redistribute according to category. So all the hockey pictures are one place and all the teaching photos are in one place, etc, etc. We have 10s of thousands of pictures on file, all organized this way. It works very well and the school utilizes the students work for everything - web site, Alumni Magazine - you name it. We made a commitment to this system with Aperture v1. The thought of migrating all of this material, which will eventually have historical value, is mind blowing. We are thinking of buying a new Mac and never upgrading it just so we can keep our files available on Aperture into the future. I would consider doing this (never buying new Macs) for all 25 production Macs in the Media department if I knew the camera companies wouldn't keep changing RAW. I've spent some time looking at Lightroom and am not very impressed. It certainly lacks eloquence. Apple should either have a Pro division or spin Aperture and FCP off like they did Filemaker.

I have spent years building clients libraries around the world based on Aperture...since the start

Apple has simply dumped on me and my clients with a short 'Dear John' letter.

I find this beyond reproach and an appalling betrayal of customer loyalty.

The reasons are obvious as to why Apple has simply turned iPhoto into Photos....its simply what iPhoto should have been ages ago but they let it lag, plus the spreadsheet accountants in the back room have said Aperture doesn't make money .....too small customer base..so drop it.

Steve Jobs..you should be ashamed. You have literally ruined my reputation and left me in the cold.

As to an alternative?

Well I am trialling all of them and apart from the gift Apple has seeded to Adobe (Lightroom & Photoshop cloud bundle) its a no brainer for Capture One Pro 8 and Media publisher if you are serious about your business.

Apple should have on sold Aperture rather than dump it!!! It makes more money than most small companies so it easily could have continued with Aperture if it had a soul and spirit.

exactly!!!!!