Aperture's Iris Closing?

[h'biki]

Think Secret is reporting that Apple has disbanded its Aperture development team, which leaves Apple's entry into the professional photography market in limbo.

The "Shake and Motion" team?

I know nothing about the internal structure of Apple... but are the Shake and Motion team REALLY the same Team?

If they were then it'd explain the fact that Shake has barely changed since Apple bought it from Nothing Real. ie no one is actually really doing anything with Shake.

But I'm not sure if are the same team as Shake and Motion are so fundmanetally technologically different...

Oh well.

 

[jdurston]

I for one love Aperture. The non-destructive image editing is awesome (although it takes a lot of horsepower to pull of smoothly.

The library organization is much more flexible than iPhoto. Where I had multiple libraries in iPhoto I simply made new projects in Aperture.

If Apple can work a few things with the UI to make it more intuitive then it'll be a homerun.

I think the reason that it has gotten such mixed review is that you can't just sit down with Aperture for an hour and expect to write a accurate review. This program is powerful but take time to learn its full functionality. A journalist just isn't going to get the full experience in their limited test.

 

[manu chao]

Maybe there are some technical problems on the development side but as a product Aperture simply rocks. Yes it might be slow at times, yes there might be some missing functions, yes there might be some minor quality issues but compared with PS, I actually do find the time and motivation to organise and improve my photos and do not give up after a working on a handful of photos thinking that I am never going to be able to keep track of all the changes and will never finish it.

Either my needs are those of too small a minority, or these are just technical problems that will be overcome. Apple has a truely revolutionary program with Aperture.

Or the whole article is just complete male cow excrement, which was my first reaction and still is.

EDIT: Concerning the male cow excrement: Can't one use any strong words here anymore? This word has no violent or sexual overtones, it is no insult to anybody here.

 

[NickFalk]

Remember people, FCP was horrible in its earliest incarnations, but is now awesome.

Really? earliest incarnations? Version 2.0 was way ahead of anything remotely close to the same price-point.

 

[ctachme]

Well I for one wouldn't mind this... if it meant that Apple discontinued Aperture as a separate and just included it with iLife for free

 

[peharri]

Actually, it's good news. Here's why

My reading is that Apple is largely concerned that software that does "X" (insert values for "X" here) is available on the Mac platform. If it's cross platform, then the more the merrier, as that aids Apple's interoperability, which while they remain a minority platform, is very important.

If Adobe is coming out with a competitor, still more a, so far, well received competitor, then it most certainly is in Apple's best interests to "drop" Aperture. Dropping it aids Adobe and aids the third party product that has a chance of being cross platform.

By aiding Adobe, it also strengthens the confidence of third party developers who support Apple. They know that unless they screw up, Apple isn't always going to sweep in and steal their lunch money. This is probably the most serious problem with Windows at the moment, Microsoft has, time and time again, driven third parties into the dust.

There's no point in Apple competing with Adobe if it doesn't result in a significantly better product aimed at the same market. It's a waste of Apple's resources. It drives home the message that Apple doesn't care about third party support. It doesn't add anything to the Macintosh platform. It undermines cross platform compatibility.

Aperture has done the job it was intended to do. It has proven the credibility of CoreGraphics, and it's proven the value of a particular type of tool enough that other people want to create those tools. Let's not get disappointed by a decision from Apple that clearly doesn't harm the platform at all, and will give more confidence to developers to develop great things for the platform. There's more cause, in my view, to mourn the passing of AppleWorks than Aperture.

 

[ipacmm]

I hope Think Secret is wrong because with the 1.1 update, it has made Aperture run a lot better. I really enjoy using Aperture for all of my pictures. I hope that apple will continue developing it because that would be a real waste of money for apple if the dropped it.

 

[deadturtle]

I completely disagree.

If Apple has decided to abandon the project, which will be a PR nightmare, they would want to be selling as few copies NOW as possible.

Yeah the last thing apple would want is folks snapping up 'dead' software and then calling apple on it when they need support etc. Having to tell your customers uh no we dont support that software anymore would look even worse. If Apperture is an Edsel that apple's best course of action would be to trickle down the features and put a bullet in the main app. Stop selling it now etc.... so hopefully this is all just rumor mongering.

 

[BenRoethig]

If this were true, it would be a reputation-loss for Apple... never start what you can't finish.

On the competitive threat of Lightroom... I always felt that Adobe's lack of universal support was a punishment for Apple trying to compete with it. Of course, I have no proof of this. I also don't use any of either photo-related products.

Lightroom is a universal binary app. Since it's a new app, they were able to build it on xcode. Steve Jobs was only half truthful when he said the transition would be easy. Anything built on xcode is able to be converted pretty easy. aAnything built on code warrior is another story. All of their other programs are more or less carbon programs that have been built upon classic OS versions in codewarrior. They have to move them to xcode and basically almost do a complete rewrite which is why they're waiting for the next versions to do it.

 

[adamfilip]

i really like aperture and with the update its output is great better then adobes

i hope they continue to develop it and streamline it so it runs faster

 

[avkills]

I am not impressed with Aperture. I played around with it on a Quad G5 Quadro FX4500, 4GB of RAM and I was waiting for stuff to happen. I should not have to wait for stuff to happen dealing with single layer still pictures unless it is some insane filter or an astronomically large picture.

But the post above about Apple undermining 3rd parties and their applications makes some sense, even though Apple is trying to stomp on Adobe's weenie with FCP and Motion.

The reason Shake has not changed all that much is the fact that it is a very solid product, Apple at least has the smarts not to break something that isn't broken.

-mark

 

[Warbrain]

I played around with Lightroom - don't really care for it. It's missing a lot of features that that kind of software should have and also actually applies things to the photo so if you want to undo something you have to keep hitting undo and lose all of your changes. Example if I want to set it to sepia and make a few changes, if I decide I don't like the sepia but want to keep my current changes, oh well - have to undo all until I get the sepia removed.

...that or I'm just an idiot who didn't know how to use the app

That's how Photoshop has always been for me. And it's quite dumb to force a person to do that.

 

[p0intblank]

Wow, this is not good. I have yet to use Aperture, but I really want to see Apple do well in this market. I don't think I quite understood the article, though... is Aperture development altogether coming to a close or are they switching up the teams?

 

[SalsaShark]

Glad they're doing SOMETHING

I'm not sure what all you people who are touting Aperture's interface are seeing. It's a bunch of nondescript buttons and there's nothing at all intuitive about it. Plus, it's slow. Plus, it continues to live by this Apple philosophy of making a second copy of everything you work with. When I'm shooting thousands of RAW images a day, the last thing I want is to have two copies of every image on my laptop.

I've been extremely impressed with Lightroom. Sure, it's still missing a few features that would be nice to have, but it is a beta, and Adobe does seem to be listening. Even in its current state, I find it infinitely more usable than Aperture. If this report is true, it's the best thing that could happen, in either scenario. Either put the thing out of its misery for good or get some people working on it who know what they're doing.

 

[joebells]

I personally can't imagine they are going to abandon it. If they were they would probably have stopped selling it and maybe even given all the money back to the people that already bought it.

 

[70355]

this could negatively impact sales, so hopefully they double checked their sources on this story

arn

If you are so concerned, maybe you should have held off "reporting" this news until you were able to confirm.

But of course, that would entail you doing some legwork of your own, and not simply regurgitating what other sites report.

 

[bretm]

This explains perfectly the price drop.

Well then explain why DVD Studio Pro went from $1000 to $500 a few years ago?

Let's see, I think it was called Adobe Encore. Which wasn't out, but had been announced.

The first 2 versions of DVD SP were barely functional unless you were a programmer. It was a new product breaking ground in a fairly new field. Aperture will survive.

 

[jelloshotsrule]

If you are so concerned, maybe you should have held off "reporting" this news until you were able to confirm.

But of course, that would entail you doing some legwork of your own, and not simply regurgitating what other sites report.

but macrumors is a compilation of other rumor sites, as well as having a few of its own sources, who when they turn up (admittedly it's not frequent), turn out to be quite accurate.

this is an important story, whether it is true or not because either way it will have an impact on sales.

well done taking the time to sign up for a site just to trash it, fudgepacker...

 

[bretm]

Really? earliest incarnations? Version 2.0 was way ahead of anything remotely close to the same price-point.

I was using 1.2 and making good money with it. At the time, it was more akin to a media composer costing tens of thousands more. Avid was still only a turnkey company and their cheapest offering was aroudn 20 grand, and was limited to 5 layers of video or some crap like that.

Truth is, except for some audio control tools and media management, FCP hasn't really changed much since version 2. They keep layering on additional stuff, but the guts are the same.

I'm not sure what all you people who are touting Aperture's interface are seeing. It's a bunch of nondescript buttons and there's nothing at all intuitive about it. Plus, it's slow. Plus, it continues to live by this Apple philosophy of making a second copy of everything you work with. When I'm shooting thousands of RAW images a day, the last thing I want is to have two copies of every image on my laptop.

That's really odd, because that's exactly what they tout they're NOT doing. All changes are undoable. Meaning they just record all your actions to an image as metadata. No changes are made to a file until you output to a certain format.

 

[bretm]

I'm not sure what all you people who are touting Aperture's interface are seeing. It's a bunch of nondescript buttons and there's nothing at all intuitive about it. Plus, it's slow. Plus, it continues to live by this Apple philosophy of making a second copy of everything you work with. When I'm shooting thousands of RAW images a day, the last thing I want is to have two copies of every image on my laptop.

Thought I'd quote apple ...

"Unlike the duplicate files you need to create in other applications, image “versions” take up virtually no storage space, so you don’t pay an overhead penalty. And Aperture automatically keeps track of all your image versions for you, sequentially numbering them on the fly and connecting them to the “master” image as part of a Stack. How helpful is that?"

 

[bretm]

I'm pretty sure that was uncalled for.

Well that's his screen name, jholzner.

 

[SiliconAddict]

Yeah, I've heard from friends that Aperture is slow, but interesting and useful. I really hope this is not true.

Highlighted for relevancy. I haven't played with Aperture on a Macintel yet so who knows what performance on these DC systems is like. Like cops like to say speed kills. In this case it kills the app. However I don’t think speed is the biggest stickler for many professional photographers. Its how Aperture handles RAW support through the OS. This is BAD IMHO. An image's characteristics should never be tied to the OS. Just as a browser should never be integrated into an OS *coughs*IE*coughs*. Core Image is a very cool thing for your everyday average app but I think there are a number of people out there who are skitterish about using it in pro applications. *shrugs* Or maybe not. I haven’t had my caffeine for the day so who knows.. . . ZZZZzzzzZZZZzzzz

 

[Peace]

Anybody consider the possibility Apple is changing Aperture into Apple's version of Photoshop ?..Given PS won't be a UB until 2007 I'd say the better engineers are going after Adobe for not releasing PS earlier..THAT"S what's truly hurting sales..

 

[JoshH]

Remember when DVD Studio Pro went from version 1 to 2? Wasn't it pretty much completely reworked? This sounds similar to me...

 

[themacman]

maybe they have disbannded the aperature team to get new ones for a whole new reworked product