So long and farewell to one of photography’s mainstays over the past decade and a half.
Apple announced that, after Mac OSX Mojave, your computer will no longer be able to run Aperture and you will need to transition to another program.
Among Apple’s suggestions are its own Photos program and Adobe’s Lightroom Classic.
None of this news is surprising though to people who have used Aperture – or, at least, used to do so.
After the announcement in 2015 that Apple would no longer update the software, the writing was pretty much on the wall.
Apple’s press release on the end of Aperture once and for all summarizes this nicely, “In June 2014, Apple announced the discontinuation of development of Aperture. Since that time, Apple has released five major macOS updates. For technical reasons, Aperture will not run in future versions of macOS after macOS Mojave. To continue working with your Aperture photo libraries, you must migrate them to the Photos app included with macOS, or migrate them to Adobe Lightroom Classic.”
Still, some people think that Apple’s Photos program is not a valid replacement for Aperture, and it definitely isn’t a solution for professionals.
Lightroom Classic is considered the industry standard by many people but Aperture still had its supporters.
For the more pessimistic among us, all of this is just further evidence of a long term trend on Apple’s part to move away from creatives, a niche it once dominated.
Beyond Apple, it also is a reminder that Adobe’s cloud subscription services are truly the way of the future and that standalone software has had its day.
Not that Aperture was cheap when it first came out.
Coming in at $499, it was quite a pill to swallow but at least you owned it.
Do you use Aperture? What are your plans? Let us know in the comments.