Aperture 4?

[Scuba629]

I have a store credit of $100 dollars and was going to buy Aperture 3.3 but was wondering if it would be wasted.

Has there been any chatter about a new release? Or if I buy Aperture 3.3 now will my upgrade price be reduced? Free?

Thanks for your help!

 

[fcortese]

I have a store credit of $100 dollars and was going to buy Aperture 3.3 but was wondering if it would be wasted.

Has there been any chatter about a new release? Or if I buy Aperture 3.3 now will my upgrade price be reduced? Free?

Thanks for your help!

Aperture 3.3 was a somewhat significant upgrade adding many new features. Some claiming that it should have been the original A3. An A4 release has been in the rumor mills for some time now, so who knows when or if it will be released in the near future. If you want to go with Aperture, then I'd say go for it now. If you have A3.3 and and A4 is released w/i a short time of your purchase, Apple has always honored that situation with free upgrades in the past. If it comes months down the road, then you can decide on whether to upgrade at the upgrade price or not at that time. As an Aperture user, I love the file management format and as for the ability to post-produce pictures it meets 90+% of my needs. The other 10% or less of the time, I use plug-ins. My 2c FWIW.

 

[robgendreau]

I'm not so confident about that free upgrade...can you give an example from the App Store? Generally there's been no way through that outlet. iLife applications usually don't have upgrades, you just pay full price for the next version. I suspect over time $79 per each Aperture version will about equal the old pricing schedule, but it's hard to know.

Sometimes I wish Apple had the equivalent of Adobe's new subscription model. With applications like LR and Aperture you're gonna be in for the long haul anyway. And with Apple you never know what they're gonna do, which makes it rather hard to invest in their software.

There are probably a lot of folks in your same situation; if you find out from Apple what the upgrade policy will be let us know.

 

[shaunp]

Not sure

I've been using Aperture for the past couple of years and while I prefer it to Light Room, Light Room 4 does have better features. Things like lens correction should be built into Aperture and plugins are just a poor excuse for Apple not updating this product at regular intervals.

For me I'm looking at what Apple do this year. If there is no update by the end of the year then I will probably buy Light Room 4 as Aperture just seems to have no real road map at this point in time.

 

[driftless]

as Aperture just seems to have no real road map at this point in time.

It has a road map, we are just not privy to it.

 

[MCAsan]

Given the low cost from the App Store, start with Aperture 3.3 as it now shares the library with iPhoto. If you find it limiting, you can always get LR in the future.

 

[Glassed Silver]

It has a road map, we are just not privy to it.

Pro applications live and die by public roadmaps in many companies.

Creative companies might be a little more forgiving out of tradition, but if Apple doesn't want to test the "Apple is on its way down" sentiments too much, they better get their a**es up and get working on Aperture 4.
And about the Mac Pro, I don't even want to start on that sad tale...

Really, I'm a diehard Apple fan, but they are really testing us at the moment big time.
It's all iDevices now, if you're a user beyond iDevices, you need a lot of patience right now. (apart from Macbook Pro Retina maybe, that was quite nice, apart from the obvious letdowns)

Glassed Silver:mac

 

[Edge100]

Really, I'm a diehard Apple fan, but they are really testing us at the moment big time.
It's all iDevices now, if you're a user beyond iDevices, you need a lot of patience right now. (apart from Macbook Pro Retina maybe, that was quite nice, apart from the obvious letdowns)

Glassed Silver:mac

Counterpoint:

Apple is in business to make money. That's it. They are doing that better than almost anyone else, based on their current strategy. If you feel that Apple owes pro app/Mac Pro users anything, then you're dead wrong. You'll get an updated Aperture and Mac Pro when Apple is good and ready (assuming they're ever updated).

If Apple thought they needed Aperture 4 and a new Mac Pro to make money, they'd have released them already. The fact that they haven't indicates that devoting the time, money, and personnel to the R&D required for these releases is not a priority - with respect to the bottom line - relative to other products. Apple is the largest publicly traded company in the world. They have teams of people whose only job is to figure out whether it's better to invest a dollar in an iPad update or in a Mac Pro update. Nine hundred and ninety nine times out of one thousand, that dollar will go to the iPad. The reality is that the iPad and iPhone are more profitable for Apple than the Mac, and far more profitable than the Mac Pro, specifically. If you were under the impression that Apple was in business for any other reason than to maximize profits for itself and its shareholders, you're delusional.

Other companies are making money expressly from the sale of pro apps (Adobe being one of the biggest). Perhaps your money would be better spent with them? Mine was.

 

[AxisOfBeagles]

I agree completely with Edge's comments about Apple's motivations in this regard; they are looking to sell their devices. Everything else is important only insofar as those things support that primary goal. And they owe no-one on the outside their roadmap.

But that still doesn't make me want to run to Adobe. Aperture 3.4 is a substantially better return on my dollars, at least for me. The great fear for most of us who are heavy Aperture users is that with 4.0 we'll see another dumbing down of the application, to cater to the lowest common denominator of the market. In this case, basically a merging of iPhoto and Aperture.

Once upon a time Apple cared about leading edge application markets - such as graphic design and video editing - when those helped make the case for the Macs. No longer true, when the vast bulk of Apple's profits come from iPhones and iPads.

Crossing my fingers that Aperture 4.0 is a both a reality, and continues to serve the advanced user market. But not holding my breath.

 

[Edge100]

But that still doesn't make me want to run to Adobe. Aperture 3.4 is a substantially better return on my dollars, at least for me. The great fear for most of us who are heavy Aperture users is that with 4.0 we'll see another dumbing down of the application, to cater to the lowest common denominator of the market. In this case, basically a merging of iPhoto and Aperture.

That's a totally fair, reasonable point of view. If A3.4 is working for you, stick with it.

Once upon a time Apple cared about leading edge application markets - such as graphic design and video editing - when those helped make the case for the Macs. No longer true, when the vast bulk of Apple's profits come from iPhones and iPads.

Exactly. Once upon a time, Apple made the bulk of its money from the Mac. That's no longer the case.

The Mac is in no danger of disappearing; these iDevices still need a computer as the home base, if you will. And people still need to create content to be consumed on these devices.

But while OS X is made only by Apple, there are loads of companies making content creation software. I'm not really sure that it's in Apple's best interest to devote any substantial R&D time/money/personnel on developing pro apps. The only way it would be worth Apple's while to do so is if they were somehow in danger of losing pro customers to other hardware platforms. And even there, that's only if they would lose significant money on the hardware sales; and I'm not convinced that the pro market really makes up all that much of Apple's Mac-related profits anyway. Moreover, you've got to think that Aperture/Logic/FCP are loss leaders, for the most part, re: the hardware (since they're exclusive to OS X).