Apple doesn't like photographers

[page3]

Well first of all I am still happy with Aperture, second as I explained earlier I have 70000 pictures sorted in Aperture into albums that I would like to keep that way. It seems there is a transition path to Lr but after that I assume I am stuck.

I use computers for too long and learned that it is very important to think about your legacy work.

The Lightroom import is a bad joke - you'll lose all your edits. I'd suggest Capture One, which is a far better product, has a decent import and is actually "mac-like" in its implementation. Nothing integrates in to the OSX ecosystem like Aperture though.

 

[tcphoto1]

I never warmed up to Aperture or Lightroom because of their user interface but CaptureOne Pro8 and now v9 has blown me away. I'm a freelance photographer and shoot tethered on 98% of my shoots and it gives me everything I need to please the AD or CD sitting in front of the display. It keeps my sessions in order so I can backup when I get back to the studio and hands files over to Photoshop seamlessly.

Apple built it's reputation on graphic design and photography but abandoned us when they killed the antiglare display in '07 and started making the iPhone, iPod and iPad. I then realized that you cannot be married to a brand and find the best product for your process. I've never owned another brand of computer but I'd buy another companies machine if it gave me better, faster results. Download the 30 day free trial of CaptureOne Pro9 and see for yourself.

 

[Mr.Noisy]

Apple and Photography no longer exist side by side, I was a photojournalist for a long time, I travelled and when I got home my Mac was always there, with photoshop just a click away, but for DAM and basic editing I found aperture was pretty simple and easy to use, and did a good job, but apple had to drop support for aperture and soon it became abandoned, as apple abandon 'real' photographers in favour of iPhone snappers, and as many people here have said, apple is all about social media, yes iOS and facebook or instagram are great, I use them daily, but for my editing needs my Mac Pro is running LR and PS, but the machine is becoming more outdated by the day, I have tried many editing suites over the years as a photographer but always felt comfortable with Adobe products, and for me, upgrading the Mac Pro isnt an option, neither financially or practically, since I became semi retired just before the summer I cant justify investing in apple products that just wont do the job anymore that at one time they were great for, yes I know many people who do and many will all say yes I use an iMac, but they will quickly become very dated, personally I will be getting a windows based workstation, and run ms office and Adobe creative cloud apps, everything is becoming cloud based (ms office 365), and apart from photo editing, a few spreadsheets, and invoices and letters, a new Mac is overkill considering its out of date in the first 12 months, and as Im getting older (I can see 50 from where im standing) I just want to keep my editing simple, but stable, as for apple, photography was a big market, they tapped into and tapped out of, just my thoughts, not trying to start any arguments but apple disappointed me with lack of aperture support for what could have been THE best DAM and editing suite out there and it was simple to use.

 

[AppleHater]

My guess is that for Apple's liking, Aperture must be not generating enough revenue or not grabbing enough market share. Business drop supports for under performing products all the time...

 

[robgendreau]

The Lightroom import is a bad joke - you'll lose all your edits. I'd suggest Capture One, which is a far better product, has a decent import and is actually "mac-like" in its implementation. Nothing integrates in to the OSX ecosystem like Aperture though.

You don't "lose" your adjustments; they're essentially proprietary and still exist in Aperture, or Photos if you migrate. NO software can reproduce those completely; the only way is to export TIFFs. Capture One can import lots of 'em, but not all. As even Capture One used to note, their adjustments are better than Aperture's, so perhaps it's better to start over from RAW. Here's what they say transfers directly:

Below is a list of what is supported

Collections

Aperture Project -> Capture One Project

Aperture Folder -> Capture One Group

Aperture Album -> Capture One Album

Any Aperture Projects which directly contain images have a generic sub-album created in CO to contain the images.

Smart Albums, Books, Light Tables, Slideshows, Web Journals, and Web Pages are not imported.



Adjustments

• Straightening
• Crop (if not Straightened)
• Flip
• Black & White
• Enhance/Definition -> Capture One Clarity
• Enhance/Saturation -> Capture One Saturation
• Exposure/Exposure -> Capture One Exposure
• Exposure/Brightness -> Capture One Brightness
• Highlights & Shadows (Mid Contrast ignored)

Everything else is ignored.



Metadata

Star Rating

Color Label (note: Ap Grey becomes Capture One Purple)

Applied Keywords (flat, not hierarchical)

IPTC Core Contact: Creator Name, Job Title, Address, City, State/Province, Postal Code, Country, Telephone, Email, Website

IPTC Core Content: Headline, Caption, Keywords, IPTC Subject Code, Caption/Description Writer

IPTC Core Image: Intellectual Genre, IPTC Scene Code, Location, City, State/Province, Country, ISO Country Code

IPTC Core Status: Title, Job Identifier, Instructions, Provider (Credit Line), Source, Copyright, Usage Terms
​

Whether it's "better" than Lr, or "Mac-like" or useful or worth the price depends on what your own personal opinion, but worth looking at. And I think there might be a workaround for hierarchical keywords somehow; C1P finally got around to supporting them (poorly, but improving). And missing lots of IPTC stuff, but again I think that may be fixed with workarounds.

I'd recommend a look at Mylio, and even Aperture Exporter. At least the latter gets you set up to move to most any other organizer.

 

[dyn]

Seems a simple decision to me. Focus on the kind of photographers who are most meaningful to Apple's business. Leave professional photography apps to other developers. That's neither love nor hate, that's a pragmatic business decision.

And that is exactly what I meant. Just like every business they have to make decisions. If there is a lot of competition it doesn't make much sense to join in on that. That same competition is also the reason why Apple's move isn't that bad.

Ditto for all the whaling that Apple is becoming a consumer company: there have never been more Macs in businesses, not to speak of iPhones and iPads.

They have always been a consumer company. They tried business but failed at that. That's why they asked IBM and Cisco to help them out.

 

[OreoCookie]

They have always been a consumer company. They tried business but failed at that. That's why they asked IBM and Cisco to help them out.

No, they haven't been a consumer company, they've a company that markets to users (rather than corporations aka enterprise). Plenty of businesses have had a disproportionate amount of Macs (compared to the market as a whole), and Apple was able to gain a foothold in these markets because the employees want to use Macs. That's opposite to Microsoft's approach which conquered the IT departments from the top.

Apple's alliance with IBM doesn't help them build different computers or a influences the direction the OSes evolve in. Instead the purpose is to supplement a hole in their services portfolio (extended service for hardware) as well as have an official partner if a large enterprise wants custom software developed for specific purposes. A lot of this software is invisible to people. For instance, in Japan a lot of shops use iPod touches or iPhones (e. g. to check for inventory), and many running sushi places rely on iPads to take orders. If it weren't for the familiar wifi indicator, you'd never know.

In the end, there are many more Macs and iOS devices in businesses today than ever before, so to me they are more successful than ever here.

You don't "lose" your adjustments; they're essentially proprietary and still exist in Aperture, or Photos if you migrate.

You can lose the quotation marks, you lose your adjustments just like you would if you migrated from Lightroom to C1P. Different RAW converters have different “sliders”, period. Different apps organize photos differently, and there may not be a correspondence within the new app you are migrating to (e. g. Aperture can embed folders, albums and books inside of projects).

NO software can reproduce those completely; the only way is to export TIFFs.

Exactly.

 

[page3]

You don't "lose" your adjustments; they're essentially proprietary and still exist in Aperture, or Photos if you migrate. NO software can reproduce those completely; the only way is to export TIFFs. Capture One can import lots of 'em, but not all. As even Capture One used to note, their adjustments are better than Aperture's, so perhaps it's better to start over from RAW. Here's what they say transfers directly:


I'd recommend a look at Mylio, and even Aperture Exporter. At least the latter gets you set up to move to most any other organizer.

What I getting at was that Capture One does a decent attempt to preserve what it can. Lightroom claims to have an "importer" but makes absolutely no attempt to preserve anything. Pathetic.

Tried Mylio, but it has limited support for Pentax and no Smart Album functionality, which I find rather useful.

I've been on Adobe CC for 8 months now and am finding it a total drag. I find Lightroom poor for the things I consider important to me. It's just made photography a drag when it should be fun (being a hobby).

Only trialing Capture One, but so far it has been a joy to use. Liking it a lot - except for the price which is steep for a hobbiest. I wish they had a cheaper cut down version without tethering etc.

 

[shaunp]

Sort of makes it unnecessary to stay with Apple if you aren't interested in social media or the cloud for anything other than email and such, and need to work with 3rd party programs for anything important. Apple makes good use of the ecosystem, but how far is Windows behind now?

I recently tried to go back to Windows for this very reason. I thought I'd sell my nMP while it's still worth something as I have a PC that has the same performance in Lightroom and it plays games much better than the Mac.

Windows 10 is very good, but I was missing an equivalent of Messages that would work on both desktop and phone as I use this a lot. Not the end of the world, I'll use Skype, etc. Not brilliant, but not totally useless.

Then.... after migrating everything over to the PC and getting the Mac out of the way I plugged my second monitor into the PC and I was astonished. Astonished at how badly Windows 10 handles multiple monitors. Okay, there's the issue of high DPI monitors (4K), which looks even worse when one of your monitors is 4K and the other one isn't, everyone knows about this. It's the way Windows 10 handles apps across multiple monitors that got me. Apps (with the exception of Office) always open up on the primary monitor regardless of whether you clicked on the task bar icon on a different monitor. Office apps open up on the last screen on which they were used, again regardless of which task bar icon you use. That and the lack of gestures for flipping between virtual desktops makes a Windows 10 PC feel very awkward to use. If you have just one monitor, you don't use Messages and you are okay with keyboard shortcuts to flip between virtual desktops, then go for it.

I can get a much faster performing PC for the equivalent money, but it's the annoying little things in Windows that held me back from going over to a PC. Lightroom works great and is really quick, it seems to cope better with GPU acceleration than the Mac does. My PC is also very quiet and has all the storage I need held internally. My nMP is silent, until I add storage to it. I really do see the benefits of a PC, and it's only a few tiny things that hold me back. The grass isn't always greener, so just think about what you want before you jump ship. I would (and did) however go from Aperture to Lightroom and have no regrets at all.

 

[robgendreau]

What I getting at was that Capture One does a decent attempt to preserve what it can. Lightroom claims to have an "importer" but makes absolutely no attempt to preserve anything. Pathetic.

Tried Mylio, but it has limited support for Pentax and no Smart Album functionality, which I find rather useful.

I've been on Adobe CC for 8 months now and am finding it a total drag. I find Lightroom poor for the things I consider important to me. It's just made photography a drag when it should be fun (being a hobby).

Only trialing Capture One, but so far it has been a joy to use. Liking it a lot - except for the price which is steep for a hobbiest. I wish they had a cheaper cut down version without tethering etc.

They had a cheaper version, Capture One Express, but discontinued it. Bummer. It is pretty expensive, but so is this hobby

Mylio does support DNGs; I use it with my Pentax. There are some nagging bugs, but they quash stuff pretty quickly. And your Lr adjustments for the most part are "imported" into Mylio; more than what C1 imports from Aperture:

Supported Lightroom edits [in Mylio]:

• Temp
• Tint
• Exposure
• Contrast
• Clarity
• Whites
• Blacks
• Highlights
• Shadows
• Saturation
• Vibrance
• BW/Color
• Crop

​

But while it does Lr faces, it doesn't do hierarchical keywords. Most other metadata is supported. Bug 'em about smart albums and filters and hierarchical keywords; I'd love to see them make it better. They also just added support for synching PDFs; not very useful with mobile devices since the mobile apps can't do anything with the PDF, but other devices like NAS's, other Macs, etc can.

And while I guess it's good C1 can import some Aperture adjustments, I'm not sure it would be worth it. I still have some adjusted Aperture images, and I prefer just looking at the exported previews and then running the RAW through newer software, which has some great new tools Aperture didn't have. Or I've forgotten them....

 

[nevheatley3]

Apple believes an iPhone camera is good enough for anyone. They don't see that in many situations its woefully inadequate.
Try motion or low light photography. Or wildlife or macro.
Unfortunately for most of the world a camera phone is good enough. We are the top 1%'s.

The problem with that thinking is that many people don't really care about "quality" now and are all about just having some form of documentation of an event. Since things are cyclical, it will probably come back around in 10 years or so.

 

[dyn]

No, they haven't been a consumer company, they've a company that markets to users (rather than corporations aka enterprise).

That is what people mean with "consumer company": a company aimed at consumers aka human beings and thus no businesses, corporations, etc.

Plenty of businesses have had a disproportionate amount of Macs (compared to the market as a whole), and Apple was able to gain a foothold in these markets because the employees want to use Macs. That's opposite to Microsoft's approach which conquered the IT departments from the top.

And many knives have been used as screwdrivers. That still doesn't mean that you can and should use a knife as a screwdriver nor that the manufacturers suddenly target their knives at the audience wanting a screwdriver.

Apple tried to target itself at businesses and had many products (both hardware and software) for that. Apart from the Mac Pro they all failed and Apple had to kill each one of them. Aperture is yet another example of that. They have never been good in this area which is why they need help from those who are (Big Blue for one). The fact that people in businesses want Macs and get Macs does not change any of this. It only means that Apple got lucky.

The fact that OS X does not have a complete Active Directory support (you can't use GPOs) is one of the main reasons why those business people want a Mac. The lack of GPOs causes the machine to be much faster to log into and out of. And that's the problem: these people only care for a faster system, if they are presented a Windows machine that is faster they'd take that just as easily. Again, Apple got lucky here.

Other than that there still are many areas where OS X simply isn't an option because it cannot run the software the business requires. CAD/CAM software is a very good example as well as many ERP/CRM/etc. systems. Until the alliance with IBM and Cisco Apple also didn't even try to get those software companies on board.

Apple's alliance with IBM doesn't help them build different computers or a influences the direction the OSes evolve in. Instead the purpose is to supplement a hole in their services portfolio (extended service for hardware) as well as have an official partner if a large enterprise wants custom software developed for specific purposes.

It is not about the hardware or the OS it runs nor is it about enterprises because it is about creating the environment for it. IBM is required to understand businesses and to change things like the App Store and management options of the various devices. It also helps to create momentum for business apps. It's about creating a platform and making it attractive for others to use. It is more like trying to get CAD/CAM (sticking to the previous example) follow AutoDesk and start building OS X and/or iOS software.

In the end, there are many more Macs and iOS devices in businesses today than ever before, so to me they are more successful than ever here.

That is just an opinion because reality is that the marketshare isn't all that much higher. The reason the marketshare is higher is most definitely not due to Macs but due to iOS devices. Many businesses and even municipalities and the like are using iPads (paperless office) and/or an iPhone. If you look at the tooling from Apple you can see that most of them are catered for iOS and not for OS X. The fact is that all of these are consumer devices and none of them has been solely meant for businesses. The products that actually were meant for businesses did not have these high numbers and therefore got canceled. Think Xgrid, Xserve but also their workgroup products in the MacOS era.