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Apple will no longer develop Aperture or iPhoto, OS X Yosemite Photos app to serve as replacement

Image via TechCrunch.

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Apple on Friday revealed that development on Aperture, its professional-grade photo editing application, has ceased, leaving Logic Pro and Final Cut Pro as its only remaining flagship pro-oriented Mac apps.

The news was broken to Jim Dalrymple of The Loop, who also revealed that iPhoto, Apple's consumer-level photo app, will be discontinued as well.

Both applications are due to be replaced by Apple's forthcoming Photos application, which will be included with iOS 8 and eventually bundled with OS X Yosemite, although the Mac version isn't set to launch until early 2015.

Apple did make it clear that development of Logic Pro and Final Cut Pro will continue.

"With the introduction of the new Photos app and iCloud Photo Library, enabling you to safely store all of your photos in iCloud and access them from anywhere, there will be no new development of Aperture," said Apple in its statement. "When Photos for OS X ships next year, users will be able to migrate their existing Aperture libraries to Photos for OS X."

The company also said in a statement to TechCrunch that it will provide compatibility updates to Aperture, allowing it to run on OS X Yosemite. However, further support will not exist after that.

Apple also said it is working with Adobe to help users transition to its Lightroom app for Mac.

Included with the reports was a new picture of the OS X Photos application, as seen above. From the picture, it would appear that the application has a "prosumer" layout. The app is also shown with a darker user interface, which is different from the predominantly white app shown off at the Worldwide Developers Conference earlier this month, as shown below.

Aperture hasn't seen a major update since 2010, when version 3.0 of the suite launched with 64-bit support, along with "Faces" and "Places" for sorting pictures. Its chief competitor for professional photographers is Adobe's Lightroom.

As for iPhoto, its last major update came in 2011, as part of the iLife '11 suite release. iPhoto also debuted on the iPad in 2012, and later came to Apple's iPhone for more advanced photo editing on the go.



219 Comments

SpamSandwich 20 Years · 32917 comments

Well, the Aperture news is surprising and disappointing. Hopefully this means Apple will be buying Adobe.

dgnr8 21 Years · 182 comments

Glad I moved to Lightroom, not that I trust Adobe....

penguinisto 12 Years · 55 comments

Damn... I don't use either one (I prefer GIMP for cross-platform compatibility), but there's a lot of folks who do professionally. I know a few, and I bet they're all going to say the same thing:"WTF?" Anyone know how similar/familiar the Photos app is interface and file-format-wise?

rogifan 14 Years · 10667 comments

[quote name="Penguinisto" url="/t/180972/apple-announces-it-will-no-longer-develop-aperture-or-iphoto-os-x-yosemite-photos-app-to-serve-as-replacement#post_2556611"]Damn... I don't use either one (I prefer GIMP for cross-platform compatibility), but there's a lot of folks who do professionally. I know a few, and I bet they're all going to say the same thing:"WTF?" Anyone know how similar/familiar the Photos app is interface and file-format-wise?[/quote] I don't think the Photos app exists yet. Apple gave a slight preview at WWDC but said it won't be available until next year.

initiator 20 Years · 104 comments

Quote:
Originally Posted by SpamSandwich 

Well, the Aperture news is surprising and disappointing. Hopefully this means Apple will be buying Adobe.


I completely agree. I recently upgraded to Aperture because iPhoto just doesn't cut it in terms of functionality for a large photo library. This is even more surprising because the new Photos app doesn't seem to be anymore than a retooled iPhoto with a new name. It isn't a true comparison. Apple should just come out and say is that they are abandoning the professional photo software market entirely. That would be more honest. I'm sure there will be people who say, "You can still use Aperture.". But, the question will be, for how long? At some point in the future, it may no longer be compatible with some future version of OS X.

 

I find this decision strange. With the introduction of the new Mac Pro, Apple seemed to have affirmed its commitment to the pro market. Abandoning one of their pro apps just doesn't make much sense. I could see if they decided to discontinue the Mac Pro and all pro apps entirely to focus only on consumers. But, that's not what they did.