And how pray tell does one do that? Sit down & create folders on your camera back before importing?
No different then doing groceries: you make up your mind what to import and where instead of hitting the import all button and then going through all the stuff. It is how it works in iPhoto, Photos, Aperture, Lightroom, Capture One, Darktable and probably many others. The nice thing from apps like Aperture, Lightroom, etc. is that you can actually do a lot of filemanagement right in the import screen. You can't do that with consumer products such as iPhoto and Photos.
Okay... so I have never had any problems with using iPhoto for DAM. Ever. So I'm really not sure why you say it's not suitable.
It has a fast, simple and flexible management system. I can quickly and easily split a huge shoot off into separate components, create smart albums for clients, events, keywords etc.
If an application fulfils all of your needs then why would you then look to use something massively more complex & expensive with a steep learning curve?
Just look at the import: you have all sorts of filemanagement options in the professional tooling while you have almost none in the consumer ones. There is no option to tag, put it in a specific project (or create a new one), use smart filters, make sure files from different cameras are imported in such a way that you can differentiate them. So basically everything that allows you to put the files where you want them in such a way that you can easily find them is not present in iPhoto/Photos. There are also automation options so you can import in a similar way (which is nice with RAW files or projects that are similar). The manual way of importing you do in iPhoto is tedious. And it gets worse when you have to correct the mistakes you made when importing stuff.
The consumer tools are more geared towards a simple workflow where you import all your photos which you may sort later into albums. Most consumers take pictures at events (birthdays, a date, wedding, etc.) at specific dates, hence why iPhoto/Photos is very date and event driven (Photos now even calls it Memories). Professional photographers don't work like that. They have projects that they do for a client and it can span more than a specific date or they can do more projects on that particular date (a news photographer would be an example of that).
Exporting pictures is a similar story.
There are other things too. Consumers in general do not take that much pictures so the software doesn't have to have options/features to deal with large libraries in the first place. That's why most simply store everything into a single library with no option to split them up (you can use multiple libraries with iPhoto/Photos but this requires holding the option key each time you start the app (there is no option to switch between libraries). Mostly you can't tell the app to store the originals on something like a NAS without moving the entire library to it (which btw is not a good idea with the consumer products because they are not made for that and thus you can run into lots of issues and even dataloss).
Other things like backups, integration with various other tools, tethered shooting, lens support, proper (and fast) camera support (this is so crucial for the software that many developers work together with camera manufacturers on this), etc. are simply not part of these consumer tools.
Why? I am not being a smart-arse here. I'm curious to know your reasoning on this.
In my case I don't ever shoot tethered (as per your example) as I'm a field editor/photographer.
Mostly due to the reasons mentioned above but mainly because handling large files and large number of files is not something that goes well with iPhoto. Too many people have run into it and even lost pictures. Also it isn't all that fast when compared to the other products. It's also not very easy to find pictures later on, the use of tags (read: keywords) is just a pita and importing pictures can be very cumbersome.
To me iPhoto is an importing & library tool. I might occasionally straighten or crop but that's is pretty much it.
When I do have need for major editing I just open the original image in LR or PS but it's rare that I do that for the reason above but also because I know the reality of print media.
Same here (I'm using it mostly for wallpapers and iPhone, for the bigger stuff I still use Aperture but I'm looking at Capture One and Darktable/Lightroom). Photos did improve in this area because you can now have plugins. Pixelmator takes use of this which makes editing a picture a tad bit easier. There is one tool which uses this functionality to allow you to send the picture to any editor of your choice, edit it there and put the result back in Photos. I'm not sure if iPhoto has such a 3rd party utility as well though.
I have heard this argument many times & all I can say is... not in my experience.
I have over 50,000 images in my library, a huge number of which are RAWs, and it will open to the main library window in under 5-seconds and opening a 300 image Event takes less than 2-seconds.
The biggest delay is quitting, that takes about 4 to 5-seconds (yes, I just timed all).
And I really couldn't tell you the last time it crashed. I won't say it hasn't but it certainly has not done so in the last 6-months at least.
That's actually not a very large library at all, it's more on the small side. I must say that I haven't noticed crashing issues in both iPhoto and Photos but I did notice a tremendous slowdown in iPhoto (loading stuff takes at least 20 secs) if you have quite a lot of pictures. This issue is also easy to work around because all you have to do is use multiple libraries (if you double click on them in Finder it'll open iPhoto/Photos with the correct library).
I use what I use because it works for me. What is wrong with that?
In that case this entire topic is complete moot since there isn't an issue
The problem isn't in what you are using, the problem is that you do not seem to understand the tooling that you are using as you are completely unaware of the fact that the software has been discontinued for at least 2 years and haven't seen any updates since 2015. There is no guarantee from the original manufacturer that it will work with their newer macOS versions (in fact they are warning that it won't work). So basically you are using a piece of software that is quite dodgy. Experience learns that no good comes from that (bordering on bankruptcy isn't fun).
The other problem is that the software you are using has been superseded with a new product that indeed had a lot of issues in the beginning. The current version does 99,9% of your iPhoto workflow in the exact same way. The naming may be a little different in some places. Instead of ranting and shooting down something without even actually having tried it is not a very wise thing to do as it does not motivate others in helping you.
Should I modify how I work because of some mistaken perception that you're only a professional if you use particular tools?
No, you should understand the limitations of your tooling as well as known the tooling that you are comparing with. You are basing everything onto assumptions and experiences of some old version of the software. Software changes over time so it is always a good idea to revisit them before you go on a complete rant like you are doing now. What needs changing here seems to be your attitude mostly. Don't shoot down things, try them first then shoot them down.
As
@flowrider pointed out, there is no such thing as RAW support for iPhoto. iPhoto/Photos uses the in-built RAW support of MacOS X/macOS. Apple only updates the RAW support for versions of MacOS X/macOS that is currently supported (usually the current version and the previous one, anything older is out of luck). The problem here is that iPhoto hasn't been updated to work properly on the current macOS version and so can't take use of the in-built RAW support that supports the 5d4. That's the risk of sticking with old software (and so is data integrity in this case).
