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I bet this is just Apple being Apple. I can’t think of a reason why they’d drop support other than to move people to Photos and paying money for iCloud.

Are you joking? Aperture was great, but it was built on an aging architecture and it didn't provide the automatic syncing abilities Apple understood most users would want from a photo editing application going forward. There also were issues with how it managed its database and whether that could be scaled to accommodate the usage patterns brought about by mobile phone photography -- which Aperture wasn't written for. I hoped they would undertake a ground-up rewrite of Aperture that would preserve most of the user interface, but let's not pretend there was no reason to need to develop something new.
 
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The lesson I learned from this is that if there is a good alternative to apple software, go with that instead. Apple has shown it is more than happy to abandon software when it gets bored of it.

But would any other company support its no-longer-available legacy product for *years* the way Apple did here? Whatever the merits of Apple's decision, it gave its users an enormously long time to plan their next moves.
 
Saw the writing on the wall and switched to Lightroom classic a couple years back. It’s only very recently that it added the ability to modify album page templates, which is the main thing I did in aperture. Was stuck composing photo book pages in photoshop, like an animal.
 
Yeah, thanks for the reminder about the $80 Apple stole from me when it cancelled this app two months after I installed it.
 
It's a waste of their resources to keep pushing into a very crowded space that has no strategic importance to them.

I suppose news and video must be strategic for Apple then and photos on Mac aren’t.

Yeah yeah apple wants subs. I know. But here’s thing. I’d pay 10 a month for a great native photo program before even considering doing the same for news or video. In fact having a photos plus, music plus, calendar plus, email plus (you get the pic) would pretty much be a must sub from me.

Focus on software. If there’s a shift I’d like to see it’s a shift to putting value in software again. It’s a vital half of apples formula.
 
Such ********. Why do they support final cut but not aperture? Really really annoying

Because of an giant uproar. Right around the time they EOLed Aperture, FCP X was released as a much simpler, feature-reduced program. There was a lot of protest, and Apple promised to bring back some of the features in future updates, and I believe that made it mostly ok for video professionals (I never used FCP).

There was a string of these types of decisions:

-EOL of Aperture
-simplification of FCP
-the decline/stagnancy of the Mac Pro (I think they all but admitted at their round table that the iMac Pro was meant to replace the Mac Pro line before a ton of protests )
-the thinning/ port removal from most Macs
-the slowing of development of MacOS (sure they released a new version every year, but the additions of features were much less)

All of these decisions came post iPhone. It was pretty clear to me that Apple decided to steer the ship towards consumer products over pro. After all, Apple loved the mic drop style announcements for consumers, and dealing with pros was a different style of work that Apple never seemed to have its heart in.

I respect the decision (though I didn’t like it), but it felt like a betrayal. In the early days of Mac OS X Apple developed apps like Aperture and FCP to lure pros back to the Mac. For me personally, I invested a lot of time learning Aperture and committing my photo library in it. It worked to some to degree for others too, but then over the course of a few short years, Apple took a hard turn leaving those pro users in the lurch. And the way they did it was bad too- it felt like someone in a relationship that wanted out, but instead of having the guts to say it, they just treated their partner badly hoping that they would leave.
 
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Too bad. Now it’s too late to reverse course, i guess, but ditching aperture was a big mistake. One less reason to own a mac, since their proposed alternative, lightroom, runs better on windows.

As if apple cared.
 
So what's the good alternative to Aperture as a DAM...?

Capture One Pro is very close. I seriously evaluated a half dozen alternates before settling on Capture One Pro for its Aperture-like feel.

My only complaint with Capture One Pro is that it's a slower DAM than Aperture was, but not as slow as some others. If you need blazing speed, the only DAM that will do is Photo Mechanic, but that's purely a DAM and nothing else. Nothing even comes close to Photo Mechanic.

I wasn't averse to needing to buy a DAM separately, but I just didn't like having my workflow split up like that.
 
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Among all the pro apps I've used Aperture is one of the best. Despite of being neglected for so many years still performs really well. The funny part is that when Apple announced they no longer supporting the app it was still the top rated and one of the most downloaded until they finally took it out completely. SMH!
 
Your loss Apple. I moved on to Lightroom years ago and they’ve been getting my $9.99 every month. Big lost opportunity for additional services revenue every month.
 
:( :sad: :(

Sure, the writing was on the wall YEARS ago. But, like a fool, I still used Aperture as I could not find anything that worked as well holistically. I have bought and tried a few others Luminar, On1 PhotoRAW, and Photos, as well as tip-toeing into Lightroom.

I think for me, and probably many others, if Photos had a bit more features, AND if Apple sold an Extension called "Aperture" that added similar Aperture functionality to Photos, then, I'd be all over that. I am thankful for the ability to easily go back and adjust my edits, something I think Photos may not do well with extensions.

And, again like a fool, I am using Aperture to make slideshows based on 'events' that I import into iMovie with other photos and videos, and then create an :eek: DVD for the grandparents to watch for each grandchild.
 
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Development stopped 2014, but it managed to run until fall 2020 (if the user updates). Sounds amazing to me. I’ve used so much software with ****** code that stops working after a .1 update.
 
I thought apple was all about the pro? I really tried to like photos, but its really for the insta- facebook generation, not the iPhotos and Aperture crowds that brought people to Apple with proper tools and functionality. you can't even make your own damn books anymore without a 3rd party plugin and 3rd party subscription, ffs.

instead, you get an out of date Mac desktop, an overpriced all-in-one, etc. Im just getting sick and tired of apple's nonchalantness, it used to work well under Steve, but that's when the magic died and apple really doesn't have a clue.


Lol, just a rant. Lightroom is good, I still use photos to hold my large library of photos from the past few decades. things don't necessary have to change to get better, just improve /rant
Agreed. And that is one reason why Apple face declining sales. Steve will be missed for many years to come.
 
I suppose news and video must be strategic for Apple then and photos on Mac aren’t.

It's not that photos aren't strategic, but that their presence in the photos application marketplace was no longer strategic. When the launched Aperture, it was a different landscape. It was one in which Apple was still fighting for relevance. Aperture did what it needed for them. It made some photographers look at the Mac platform in the way that video editors looked at the Mac.

Mission accomplished, but because there was interest in Macs as a photography studio tool, others began upping their game too. At some point, I don't think they thought it made sense for them to keep pushing against so much competition.

Are people even aware at just how crowded of a market Aperture ended up finding itself in? Depending on how you used Aperture, you have anywhere from a dozen to several dozen programs that are credible replacements.
 
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Nothing really. There were much bigger photo editing apps before and after Aperture. People just don’t like their legacy apps going away. They complained about the loss of iWeb and iDVD (both of which could not keep up with the competition), now they’ll complain about this.

Photos is the replacement now. Its features can easily be expanded by third party apps and extensions so I suspect by now these apps have more functionality than Aperture ever did.

I'll correct you: "people don't like good legacy apps going away". They cheer bad software being dropped making room for better one. That Aperture is sorely missed is for a reason. The gap between Aperture 3 and the competition existed because Apple stopped active development however many Aperture users would be happy to get Aperture 4+ with updated capabilities and the improved editing/processing/RAW handling device no matter what certain individual facets would be different or slightly less capable than those of competing products. Apple could bring Aperture to the next level to be on par with Lioghtroom, C1, but they chose not to based solely on commercial considerations.

Also no underpowered tool with extensions, plugins acting as struts, supports and braces is a replacement with any pro photographer for a unified, integrated editing and organizing environment. In FCPX extensions work because FCPX is a solid versatile tool - at least it regained a part of its fame by 10.4; Photos is not at the level of FCPX or any other pro app.
 
I've always used aperture for ken burns slideshows. It just does it so well! Anyone using something else for that type thing with good success?

I actually do a lot of slideshows in keynote because of all the layout control you have. It’s not the best option for a fast creation but it works pretty well for varied timings and other non photo elements.
 
Since they announced its deprecation I looked up for alternatives.. Saw Lightroom and went away scared from the messy UI I saw. ( maybe because I was too much used to aperture ), Then I tried Capture One, and while it took some time to learn it had similar workflow as aperture, so at the end I learned it and now wouldn't change. I don't even look at the LR messy UI (yeah they still have it after all these years) / IMHO. (+ other problems I heard from my fellow photographers )

C1 might not have plugins and many other stuff other apps allow, but instead lets you focus on what is important, the photo itself!. If what you want is to apply filters to your photos every time, you are good with Photos app.

G.
 
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