I feel like I'm in a time warp. Next people will be wishing for a return to Classic Mac OS (you know, the one that ran on Motorola chips and crashed on a regular basis).
I was an Aperture user. I really don't miss it. I never used its multiple-library/library management features, so to me its superiority over iPhoto (don't see many regrets of iPhoto's demise) had everything to do with image editing. While it's true that Photos started off at a disadvantage to Aperture in that regard, as the years have gone by Photos has come along quite nicely.
But the FCP/Motion comparison to Aperture is misplaced. Aperture never had the market share in photo organization/editing that FCP has in video, and there's no indication that FCP is in decline. Motion is essentially a FCP add-on, and is not likely to go away unless FCP does, or its functionality is added to FCP.
Effectively, in the days when these decisions were made, nearly every pro used Photoshop, which gave Adobe a huge, natural advantage for selling Lightroom as an image-organization solution (while other image edit apps have made inroads, essentially Photoshop is still the Microsoft Word of image editing). Aperture was very much like Mac was, back in the day - something used by a small, passionate group of users willing to think different.
Bottom line for Aperture's demise... Apple was rolling-out iCloud Photos as a consumer-focused service. Apple would have had to include iCloud Photos compatibility as a feature of Aperture, even if a minority of Aperture users would want it. This meant they would have had to change Aperture's library structure to be compatible with iCloud Photos. That would not have gone down at all well with the many Aperture users who would not have been interested in iCloud Photos at all (imagine the level of user anger if every Aperture library had to be converted "for no good reason"). Apple would also have had to consider whether iCloud Photos would support the kind of feature set demanded by pros, and provide the kind of massive iCloud storage plans pros would require. If a substantial percentage of Aperture's pro users would not be likely to opt-in to iCloud Photos... why build those capabilities into the service at all? Hundreds of millions of iPhone, iPad, and "consumer" Mac users vs. a tiny fraction of that number who might use iCloud for Aperture... No, that's what's known as the "tail wagging the dog."
So, Apple pulled the plug on Aperture. Makes tons of business sense. Like they said in The Godfather, "it's not personal, it's business."
