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Archive 2014 · Take on Apple's Abandonment of Aperture

  
 
melcat
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p.2 #1 · p.2 #1 · Take on Apple's Abandonment of Aperture


jbregar wrote:
Lr was in development long before Aperture was public knowledge.


I suspect Lightroom was simply not viable until Apple legitimised the concept of all your photos being "in" a DAM application, rather than primarily accessed by a user-selected file and folder name. Apple was probably the only software publisher that could do that - they had iTunes, which did that with music. The only common "shoebox" apps before iTunes were email clients, which had a long and sorry history of corrupting users' data all the way back to the early 1980s (the infamous ">From " bug). Nobody had confidence in the things before iTunes.

So Adobe probably judged that no-one would trust Lightroom with their precious pics. But enough people did trust Apple because they'd proven they could do it with iTunes. Once Aperture was established, Lightroom was easier to sell.

(Of course, neither iTunes nor Lightroom are true "shoebox" apps, in that you can store your files outside of their internal libraries. But access is primarily by metadata lookup, not by file name.)





Aug 26, 2014 at 02:57 AM
butchM
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p.2 #2 · p.2 #2 · Take on Apple's Abandonment of Aperture


melcat wrote:
I suspect Lightroom was simply not viable until Apple legitimised the concept of all your photos being "in" a DAM application, rather than primarily accessed by a user-selected file and folder name.



That is a simply ludicrous analogy ... and is on the verge of revisionist history.

DAM solutions had been around long before both Aperture and Lightroom. While I am a fan of many things Aperture is and the features it offers ... the user base for the app has always been significantly smaller than Lightroom ... mainly because Lr is multi-platform capable.

Canto Cumulous, File Maker Pro and iView Media Pro and others were/are very good DAM solutions and were being utilized by many professional photographers for quite some time before Aperture or Lightroom ever were contemplated. Pro shooters and amateurs with larger libraries were very aware of the necessity of DAM, they did not need a developer to "legitimize" the concept.

Granted, iTunes helped sell the concept of DAM to a broader audience ... Aperture was not an industry trail blazer when it came to DAM. Lightroom would have very likely seen the same rate of growth and acceptance whether Aperture existed or not. Even now, there are a great many long time users of Lightroom that likely aren't even aware that Aperture exists or what it can do.

While DAM does make sense and is a feature many photographers find valuable, what Aperture and Lightroom bring to the table is a workflow centerpiece where you can complete the vast majority of tasks for the most images in your library without leaving the friendly confines of the host software. The DAM portion is but one of those tasks.






Aug 26, 2014 at 05:59 PM
DanBrown
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p.2 #3 · p.2 #3 · Take on Apple's Abandonment of Aperture


butchM wrote:
Canto Cumulous, File Maker Pro and iView Media Pro and others were/are very good DAM solutions and were being utilized by many professional photographers for quite some time before Aperture or Lightroom ever were contemplated.


Another example is Extensis, which even provides digital asset management to groups via Extensis Portfolio Server.






Aug 26, 2014 at 08:19 PM
melcat
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p.2 #4 · p.2 #4 · Take on Apple's Abandonment of Aperture


butchM wrote:
DAM solutions had been around long before both Aperture and Lightroom.


Aperture and Lightroom do more than DAM, though: they integrate raw processing.

Canto Cumulous,

is an enterprise DAM, accessed via TCP/IP, generally to a centralised server. "Enterprises" have IT support staff who will handle backups, provisioning and so on. Prices in AU range from A$17,000 to A$40,000 for the first year and A$10,000 to A$15,000 p.a. thereafter ($A1 = 0.93c USD yesterday). Even if the typical photographer could afford it, one can't expect something that supports all kinds of assets to provide support for new cameras as promptly as Adobe does. How many wedding photographers would have seen or used this product?

Enterprise DAM and single-user DAM on a local hard disk may share a name, but they aren't really the same thing.

File Maker Pro

is a relational database. Maybe you've had contact with some home-grown DAM tacked onto Bridge/PS using it. Nothing wrong with that, but, again, it relies on having IT support.

iView Media Pro

OK, I didn't know about that one, but a quick search reveals many of their users were left high and dry with an abandoned product their files were stuck in - one of the fears people do have about DAM.

One I did know about but forgot was Picasa. Not probably the darling of too many pro photographers, though.

While DAM does make sense and is a feature many photographers find valuable, what Aperture and Lightroom bring to the table is a workflow centerpiece where you can complete the vast majority of tasks for the most images in your library without leaving the friendly confines of the host software. The DAM portion is but one of those tasks.

Yes, iTunes is more than a DAM, because it can rip, play and burn, just as Aperture is more than a DAM. I had thought my examples made it clear the kind of software I was talking about.

DanBrown wrote:
Another example is Extensis, which even provides digital asset management to groups via Extensis Portfolio Server.


That one's £1395 for 3 seats according to a review I found. A little more reasonable but, again, probably not used much by photographers outside large organisations.




Aug 26, 2014 at 10:20 PM
jbregar
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p.2 #5 · p.2 #5 · Take on Apple's Abandonment of Aperture


melcat wrote:
I suspect Lightroom was simply not viable until Apple legitimised the concept of all your photos being "in" a DAM application


Big companies like Adobe don't become big by spending a lot of dev money and time on applications that require a competitor to come along and 'legitimize' their market.

We've established that Lr and Aperture had concurrent development paths and the teams were most likely not aware of each other's work ( in any detail) until very late in the development cycle for their respective apps.

Why would Adobe dump millions into an app they thought people 'wouldn't trust with their photos?' The short answer is they wouldn't.



Aug 29, 2014 at 10:53 PM
butchM
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p.2 #6 · p.2 #6 · Take on Apple's Abandonment of Aperture


melcat wrote:
iView Media Pro

OK, I didn't know about that one, but a quick search reveals many of their users were left high and dry with an abandoned product their files were stuck in - one of the fears people do have about DAM.



One of the fatal flaws of incomplete research is it can lead to incorrect assumptions. Much like Apple "legitimized" Lightroom via Aperture ... how absurd.

iView Media Pro users were NEVER left high and dry. I know this because I used iVMP. While it is true the app was sold to another developer, users were not without a path of continued use and support.

iVMP was purchased by Microsoft and was sold and supported as Expression Media, which all iVMP license holders were offered a free initial license/upgrade to EM. Then MS faltered and ignored the app as it languished there for a time. (As compared to the original developer)

Fortunately, EM was picked up and purchased by Phase One and is now sold and licensed under the name of Media Pro. All EM license holders were offered an initial free upgrade conversion to MP. Throughout all it's iterations, iVMP has been a very reliable DAM.

That is not being left high and dry.

Much as you mistaken it was left to Apple to "legitimize" Lightroom ...



Aug 30, 2014 at 12:28 AM
melcat
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p.2 #7 · p.2 #7 · Take on Apple's Abandonment of Aperture


butchM wrote:
iView Media Pro users were NEVER left high and dry. I know this because I used iVMP. While it is true the app was sold to another developer, users were not without a path of continued use and support.

iVMP was purchased by Microsoft and was sold and supported as Expression Media, which all iVMP license holders were offered a free initial license/upgrade to EM. Then MS faltered and ignored the app as it languished there for a time. (As compared to the original developer)

Fortunately, EM was picked up and purchased by Phase One and is now sold and licensed under
...Show more

This is the thread I happened upon without really trying:

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3068626

and that formed the basis for my comment above.



Aug 30, 2014 at 01:16 AM
melcat
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p.2 #8 · p.2 #8 · Take on Apple's Abandonment of Aperture


jbregar wrote:
Big companies like Adobe don't become big by spending a lot of dev money and time on applications that require a competitor to come along and 'legitimize' their market.


Big companies do that kind of thing all the time. A car company, for example, might develop several models and then only release one depending on the oil price, market research etc. Software doesn't have the unit production costs of manufacturing, but the costs of training support staff, for example, are relatively higher per license sold for a large company which has other bigger products, than they are for a startup which only has to support the one product. Hence how Adobe got big... buying smaller companies.

Why would Adobe dump millions into an app they thought people 'wouldn't trust with their photos?' The short answer is they wouldn't.

The rational thing to do would be to develop Lightroom to near release stage, and then, so long as there was no viable competitor, not release it. If they release it, all they're doing is inviting their customers to buy Lightroom instead of the more expensive Photoshop. If they don't develop it, they risk being caught out if someone else brings a similar thing to market. As soon as Apple released Aperture and it was a success, they had to release Lightroom. Should Aperture fail, they simply sit tight and not release Lightroom.




Aug 30, 2014 at 02:00 AM
jbregar
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p.2 #9 · p.2 #9 · Take on Apple's Abandonment of Aperture


melcat wrote:
Big companies do that kind of thing all the time. A car company, for example, might develop several models and then only release one depending on the oil price, market research etc. Software doesn't have the unit production costs of manufacturing, but the costs of training support staff, for example, are relatively higher per license sold for a large company which has other bigger products, than they are for a startup which only has to support the one product. Hence how Adobe got big... buying smaller companies.

The rational thing to do would be to develop Lightroom to near release stage,
...Show more

You have no idea how software companies operate. Heck, it appears you have no idea how companies operate. You don't become successful in business by building products and sitting on them until a competitor shows up. You forge ahead into new markets and try to get first-mover advantage. Your assertion that Adobe would pour millions of dollars into a product they didn't plan to release until a competitor comes along to 'validate' the category is laughably incorrect. Why would you ever give away first-mover advantage? Being second to market is a LOT harder, you have to be noticeably better than the first entry to win significant sales.

As for protecting Ps by not releasing Lr unless they have to, that's also silly. It's pretty much product management 101-level knowledge that you'd much rather cannibalize your product with another product than let a competitor do it. Besides, Lr and Ps were always designed to compliment each other. Lr would replace Ps for some, but chances are they were using something else anyway rather than paying $600+ for Photoshop.



Aug 30, 2014 at 09:53 AM
Photon
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p.2 #10 · p.2 #10 · Take on Apple's Abandonment of Aperture


melcat wrote:
OK, I didn't know about that one, but a quick search reveals many of their users were left high and dry with an abandoned product their files were stuck in - one of the fears people do have about DAM.



I tried iView Media Pro (on Mac) after reading The Dam Book, and was indeed left high and dry, having wasted $99 and quite a bit of time. I was thrilled when LR 2 appeared and was relatively easy to use. My reason for not trying Aperture was simply that Apple's descriptions did not make it clear to me that it had powerful cataloguing features. Having used Photoshop for years, I saw no need for Ap. I guess I've been lucky, so far, that LR continues to advance and does not yet require Cloud membership.



Aug 30, 2014 at 11:02 AM
gdanmitchell
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p.2 #11 · p.2 #11 · Take on Apple's Abandonment of Aperture


jbregar wrote:
You have no idea how software companies operate. Heck, it appears you have no idea how companies operate. You don't become successful in business by building products and sitting on them until a competitor shows up. You forge ahead into new markets and try to get first-mover advantage. Your assertion that Adobe would pour millions of dollars into a product they didn't plan to release until a competitor comes along to 'validate' the category is laughably incorrect. Why would you ever give away first-mover advantage? Being second to market is a LOT harder, you have to be noticeably better than
...Show more

There is at least one glaring, gigantic exception to your generalization which, at a minimum, suggests that things are quite so clear-cut as you would like to think. Ironically, it involves Apple.

Smart phones have been out for a long time. They had become quite a big market and some companies we barely hear from today were very successful.

For years there was talk that Apple was doing prototype work on their own phone, but they denied it and Jobs was famously dismissive of the possibility that Apple would get into that market, a market that was booming already.

But in fact, Apple did pretty much precisely what you say companies never do. They continued development as other companions made greater and greater penetration of the growing cell phone market. Apple actually waited many years before finally entering the market... at the point at which they felt that the market was big enough and their own product was good enough.

They seemed to do OK.

There is something to be said for the "first mover" idea, particularly when it comes to small companies and startups and double particularly if they are well capitalized and know what they are doing. However, big and established companies like Apple and Microsoft and many others don't necessarily work that way.

Dan

Edited on Aug 30, 2014 at 11:17 AM · View previous versions



Aug 30, 2014 at 11:06 AM
Photon
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p.2 #12 · p.2 #12 · Take on Apple's Abandonment of Aperture


butchM wrote:
One of the fatal flaws of incomplete research is it can lead to incorrect assumptions. Much like Apple "legitimized" Lightroom via Aperture ... how absurd.

iView Media Pro users were NEVER left high and dry. I know this because I used iVMP. While it is true the app was sold to another developer, users were not without a path of continued use and support.

iVMP was purchased by Microsoft and was sold and supported as Expression Media, which all iVMP license holders were offered a free initial license/upgrade to EM. Then MS faltered and ignored the app as it languished there for
...Show more
Well, for inexperienced users like me, it felt like being left high and dry, because it was difficult to get support and make things work. I know you weren't replying specifically to me, and I have no disagreement with your points. I'm just pointing out that one reason Adobe succeeded in popularizing LR was that they made it pretty photographer friendly, and used their considerable advertising and publicity resources to suggest that this was the main goal of the software. Even Apple didn't do as well in convincing us to try Aperture, IMO.



Aug 30, 2014 at 11:12 AM
butchM
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p.2 #13 · p.2 #13 · Take on Apple's Abandonment of Aperture


Photon wrote:
Adobe succeeded in popularizing LR was that they made it pretty photographer friendly, and used their considerable advertising and publicity resources to suggest that this was the main goal of the software. Even Apple didn't do as well in convincing us to try Aperture, IMO.


Which was my whole point ... the existence of Aperture in no way "legitimized" the advent or initial offering of Lightroom. Even though the first public beta of Lr was Mac OS X only, once the beta was offered on the Windows platform, Mac users have been in the extreme minority. To this day, most Windows users of Lr, are little aware or even care that Aperture existed ... Even those Windows users that were on board with Lr since v1. Aperture had exactly zero influence on those folks ... and only cursory influence on most OS X platform users. In fact, the closed "shoebox" of Aperture 1 was more than enough to sway many OS X users to adopt Lr because their files were referenced. Apple was late to the game in addressing that concern.

To believe that Adobe sandbagged Lr until someone else opened the door is laughable at best. At the time, Adobe needed growth in user base. Ps was indeed the King of the Hill, and still is, but growth in user numbers had been stagnant for quite some time.

Lightroom, and Aperture, offered the potential to address the needs photographers in the Digital Age were experiencing on how to deal with larger and ever growing libraries. Even many amateurs were becoming crushed under a mountain of digital files. Aperture and Lr were both the results of competing developers to address that potential market ... one offering did not need the other to warrant their existence. To believe so is an extremely convoluted way of interpreting the actual history of the industry.



Aug 30, 2014 at 12:18 PM
jbregar
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p.2 #14 · p.2 #14 · Take on Apple's Abandonment of Aperture


gdanmitchell wrote:
There is at least one glaring, gigantic exception to your generalization which, at a minimum, suggests that things are quite so clear-cut as you would like to think. Ironically, it involves Apple.

Smart phones have been out for a long time. They had become quite a big market and some companies we barely hear from today were very successful.

For years there was talk that Apple was doing prototype work on their own phone, but they denied it and Jobs was famously dismissive of the possibility that Apple would get into that market, a market that was booming already.

But in fact,
...Show more

Apple certainly didn't sit on a 'ready' product and wait for other competitors to legitimize smart phones. They waited until they could do a smartphone 'right' and then released it.



Sep 11, 2014 at 11:24 PM
Dave_EP
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p.2 #15 · p.2 #15 · Take on Apple's Abandonment of Aperture


Photon wrote:
Adobe succeeded in popularizing LR was that they made it pretty photographer friendly, and used their considerable advertising and publicity resources to suggest that this was the main goal of the software. Even Apple didn't do as well in convincing us to try Aperture, IMO.


I find LR frustrating to use. I have to go back and forth between library and develop modules because they won't let you do some very simple things while in the develop module! How stupid can that be? Why limit functions for a photo based on what module you're in and then make it take what sometimes seems like ages to go back and forth between modules.

I've developed tens of thousands of shots in both Aperture and LR. I know LR is better at many things, but Aperture's usability on many other points was miles ahead.

I'm looking forward to Apple's new photo app. It may just be better than many people are thinking. It's effectively a total re-write using the latest OS features. Aperture was old code and needed a re-write anyway.



Sep 12, 2014 at 11:20 AM
sparrks
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p.2 #16 · p.2 #16 · Take on Apple's Abandonment of Aperture


Dave_EP wrote:
I find LR frustrating to use. I have to go back and forth between library and develop modules because they won't let you do some very simple things while in the develop module! How stupid can that be? Why limit functions for a photo based on what module you're in and then make it take what sometimes seems like ages to go back and forth between modules.



One thing the old 'Raw Shooter Pro' was good at was it's speed, there was only one window which all editing was done from. The 'Vibrance' tool also originates from there, not 100% sure as it's a long time since I last used it, but I believe I have an old install file on hdd. One other memory of it was that the colours were sometimes a bit 'wacky'



Sep 26, 2014 at 07:34 AM
Focus Locus
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p.2 #17 · p.2 #17 · Take on Apple's Abandonment of Aperture


butchM wrote:
The existence of Aperture in no way "legitimized" the advent or initial offering of Lightroom.

The first public beta of Lr was Mac OS X only.

To believe that Adobe sandbagged Lr until someone else opened the door is laughable at best.

One offering did not need the other to warrant their existence.

To believe so is an extremely convoluted way of interpreting the actual history of the industry.



In the year that Lr was introduced, quite a few training seminars were held around the country, where the Adobe software developers made lengthy appearances as guest lecturers to explain and evangelize the new product. I attended many of these seminars.

The head Lr guy said specifically that Lr was an idea that had spawned a few years earlier, was partly developed, but was put away, or "shelved" (or "sandbagged" as you put it), and practically forgotten by many in his company, until Aperture came along. It was then that Adobe quickly brought Lightroom off the shelf, blew the dust off, polished it up, and released it as beta for the MAC to compete against Aperture. This is what the main Lr guy from Adobe said in his opening remarks at the seminar. His intentions were to point out that Adobe had already come up with the idea, and in his explanation of that point, he very clearly, if not inadvertently, made it plain that Apple's Aperture was the chief motivation for Adobe resurrecting Lightroom.

FWIW.




Nov 02, 2014 at 10:46 AM
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p.2 #18 · p.2 #18 · Take on Apple's Abandonment of Aperture


Dave_EP wrote:
I'm with you on many things. I'm in the carry on camp. Due to the way Apple implemented support for raw (through the OS) Aperture is able to develop raw files that my Adobe installations will not (e.g. Panasonic GH4).

Just because Apple abandoned it doesn't mean it no longer works, it still works as well as the day before they abandoned it, so it's good to use for a while yet.

I've tried LR and dislike much about it. I don't like the library module, I like somethings about the develop module, but why on earth do we have to have
...Show more

I'm somewhat on your side with this whole debacle. Just because AP is being discontinued doesn't mean it won't work (at least not until a future OS update breaks it.)

The main thing I use LR for is noise reduction. It's lightyears beyond AP in that regard. I shoot sports in poorly lit venues so NR is an absolute must. At this point I'm considering using LR for sports and AP for everything else until I'm forced to migrate.

I hate LR's interface and organization. It is so much less intuitive and cluttered than AP is. When Apple updated Final Cut and Logic it gave me hope that they would continue to support the photographers as well. They came out with a 5k iMac and used a photographer to talk about it after all! Is software really so much to ask?

I'm hoping when the photos app ships it has some more advanced functionality for those of us coming from AP, or at least has support for plugins.



Nov 02, 2014 at 11:26 AM
chez
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p.2 #19 · p.2 #19 · Take on Apple's Abandonment of Aperture


Focus Locus wrote:
In the year that Lr was introduced, quite a few training seminars were held around the country, where the Adobe software developers made lengthy appearances as guest lecturers to explain and evangelize the new product. I attended many of these seminars.

The head Lr guy said specifically that Lr was an idea that had spawned a few years earlier, was partly developed, but was put away, or "shelved" (or "sandbagged" as you put it), and practically forgotten by many in his company, until Aperture came along. It was then that Adobe quickly brought Lightroom off the shelf, blew the
...Show more

Makes a lot of sense. Adobe most likely did not want to erode into PS sales by releasing LR ...yet they hedged their bets and spent money developing LR. Once Apple came out with Aperture, Adobe was forced to release LR, even though it would eat into PS sales.

This to me seems like a very valid scenario...especially if you heard this being talked about by the development team.



Nov 02, 2014 at 12:14 PM
howardm4
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p.2 #20 · p.2 #20 · Take on Apple's Abandonment of Aperture


my hunch is that Adobe management at the time was too stupid to realize they needed something like this while saying 'Oh, Photoshop or Elements is enough' while being afraid to kill the goose they had. Also, probably a bunch of political infighting (and loss by the LR product team) kept Shadowland (LR's work name) on a archive tape somewhere. Once Aperture was out there, Adobe couldn't not respond. Again, the perils of a functional monopoly.


Nov 02, 2014 at 01:14 PM
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