Roger Fingas
Aperture and iPhoto were removed from the Mac App Store and are no longer available for download, checks of the storefront showed on Friday, signaling an end to two long-running product lines.
Until today, Aperture and iPhoto were still available for download despite Apple's release of OS X 10.10.3 on Wednesday. That update included Photos, an app Apple designed to replace its two predecessors.
Unlike Apple's erstwhile image editing programs, the new software integrates more closely with the Photos app for iOS. Through iCloud Photo Library support, users can upload their personal collections and access them from any Mac or iOS device. Edits applied to images on one platform are immediately reflected everywhere else.
The app is not a complete replacement for Aperture, since that program offered a greater set of parameters and tools, including many designed for a professional photography workflow.
Apple previously stated that Aperture and iPhoto will remain functional if they were already installed. With their disappearance from the Mac App Store, however, users are unlikely to get future updates, and it may not be as easy to install either title on a new Mac.
iPhoto was first released in 2002 as a part of Apple's iLife suite, while Aperture dates back to 2005. Neither app has seen a major update since 2010, although patches were issued as recently as October.
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107 Comments
So should I delete iPhoto from my Mac now?!
RIP Aperture.
As soon as I updated to 10.10.3, my Aperture app will no longer launch. Goodbye Aperture, I will miss you.
Very sad to see iPhoto fade away. Homesharing photos from you Mac to AppleTV no longer works if you download the new Photos app. The option to view photos from your computer on Apple TV goes away. iCloud Photos is the only option to view photos but it is slow and worst yet, I can no longer play a slideshow from an album from my mac on Apple TV. The whole reason I got Apple TV. Very disappointed.
In the meantime, Photos doesn't do it for me: its libraries don't show in iTunes when I try to sync my iPad Air. I was spooked at first when old iPhoto libraries wouldn't show either, after their migration to Photos format. But after changing their extension back to original (from .migratedphotolibrary to .photolibrary) and deleting a problematic XML file from the library package, everything was back to normal. And I will keep using iPhoto for as long as I can. Bad Apple, bad.