I purchased Aperture 1.5 two-to-three weeks ago, and - as with most Apple software - have found it very intuitive, and to a great extent a real pleasure to use.
Yet, this is not my reason for contacting you. My Aperture experience has taken a massive downturn, leaving me questioning my future use of the application.
What has caused this? Aperture's speed (or lack of it!).
My personal library contains 50,000+ of images taken over a period of 5-6 years, using cameras in variety from a 0.3 megapixel camera phone, to my current camera a 12.8 megapixel Canon 5D.
Upon importing my library to the computers hard drive, I noticed my computer (a high spec dual 2.5GHz G5) was badly labouring. Not the result I was expecting, but then again the computer was nearly 2 years old and so maybe it was a time to upgrade.
Soon I was the happy owner of a 2.66GHz Mac Pro, with XT1900 graphics card, and 2GB RAM. A computer which was ushering in a new era of outstanding performance, which contained a state-of-the-art processor, [making] Mac Pro one of the fastest desktop computers on the planet.
Again, I imported my library of images directly into Aperture. Result: much the same as with the G5. Frustrating, but maybe Id expected too much.
I then purchased another 2GB of RAM in the hope that a total of 4GB would pep things up a bit, and whats more, to help ease the situation I reduced the size of my library; again, and again, and again. Having slashed my library down to 15,000 images (approx 40GB), and with very little improvement, I stopped. With so little return, why reduce it further still?
Shooting more than youve ever shot before? Everyone is. And thats why Aperture was designed with powerful photo management tools. Not only can this innovative application accommodate hundreds of thousands of images
Hundreds of thousands?!! Dont make me laugh.
Aperture must be one of the most in-efficient applications ever to have been invented, and is certainly one of the most frustrating.
To rule out a hardware problem, I tried iView Media Pro, and Adobe Lightroom beta. These two applications fly, and are infinitely faster than ambling Aperture.
Please tell me my investment in Aperture has not be wasted. Please tell me we can expect a huge increase in speed with Aperture 1.5.2, as without it, this app is dead in the water.