[mst]

This is shared on all major Apple news sites today:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT209594

Quick summary: Aperture won't run on any macOS following Mojave.

I still heavily rely on Aperture, and with the exception a few minor quirks, it's still a solid and reliable piece of software, even though it hasn't seen any updates for years. Looking at the comments on all these news sites, I am obviously not the only one who postponed the move to something else to the very last moment.

Well... C1, here I come, finally... even though I still really don't want to...

[stoppingdown]

Unfortunately, a software that didn't receive updates for a long time and is no more supported is _not_ a solid and reliable piece of software... these qualities require the capability of working fine in not only in a certain moment, but also in the near future.

C1 is quite neat (BTW... I've missed the updates of the last year, I have to fix that). You'll miss cataloguing features, though.

[JJ_SO]

Unfortunately, a software that didn't receive updates for a long time and is no more supported is _not_ a solid and reliable piece of software... these qualities require the capability of working fine in not only in a certain moment, but also in the near future.

C1 is quite neat (BTW... I've missed the updates of the last year, I have to fix that). You'll miss cataloguing features, though.

If you say "is not a solid and reliable piece of software" then I hammer against your "C1 is quite neat"!   At first, a software can be reliable and very solid as it is, both properties have nothing to do with update frequencies. And compared to Capture One, Aperture IS reliable and solid!

It's opposite of neat. 100-150% clicks more to get the same (at best, mostly they are worse, misleading or not helpful) search results. Since 2016 I opened 18 support cases, mostly about no documentation in my native language (the GUI is German, so how helpful is an Englisch manual), shitty translations, tons of bugs. Like f-numbers with 15 digits past the comma - don't get me started. Lazy developers, incomplete lens profiles, etc., etc. Some issues are 2 or three major updates old and still existing.

Sorry, stoppingdown, I'm very angry and it's absolutely not your fault, right now I'd like to kick the balls of those Apple apes beancounters up their asses. Rather they pay 27 billions to Qualcomm then take 1 or 2 millions and get the best DAM back to work. But everyone waxing poetry about C1 never experiences a well thought DAM. Apple could eat Capture One for breakfast and would still have an empty stomach.

[stoppingdown]

"both properties have nothing to do with update frequencies."

They do because it might happen, as described, that your system becomes obsolete as you are forced to upgrade the o.s. and discover that you're no more compatible. Solid and reliable presuppose "runnable". ;-)

For the other comments... There are many ways in which I wish CO was better, including parts of the UI. Yes, there are signs of programmers' laziness. But it delivers and I'm pretty pleased by the quality of the outcoming images.

Coming to your last paragraph, I understand the point. The fact is that we're in the hands of software companies and that's bad. Not only for photography, of course: for instance, for years I've been used Opera Mail as my email client. It was the best option available in my evaluation. The UI was very good and in particular I appreciated the tagging facilities. Unfortunately it was extremely fragile with respect of crashes: I mean, they occurred rarely, max. twice per year, but at this point a mess happened with the internal database, incapable - by design - of recovering. But I was able to deal with it by means of a good backup strategy. Then, at a certain point... they dropped the product. Now Thunderbird is as good, so I'm happy with it, but migration was a PITA (not yet completed) because there are no ways to import rules, and I have hundreds. Lots of manually work to do.

[thxbb12]

Until the end of 2018 I had been using Lightroom (for about 10 years), then I switched to C1 and for about a month now I've been using RawTherapee which is free, open-source and multi-platform. No vendor lock-in anymore :-)
While not perfect (no layers), it's actually very good and powerful if one takes the time to get used to it.
It also handles X-Trans files way better than Lightroom, it's not even close.
What I like the most is that there is no database. It stores a file's adjustment in a dedicated file, making backups very easy. It's flexible, one can move a RAW file elsewhere and just copy the adjustment file with it (also very useful for sharing).

[JJ_SO]

"both properties have nothing to do with update frequencies."

They do because it might happen, as described, that your system becomes obsolete as you are forced to upgrade the o.s. and discover that you're no more compatible. Solid and reliable presuppose "runnable". ;-)

All I can say to that: I'm writing on a 2010 iMac, running OS X 10.12.6 (Sierra) reliably. This machine runs at least as long as my office PC per day. Update? Why? In the closet, there's a Mac Mini Power PC with OS X 10.4.6. Still running if I need it. Update? Forget it. Not for Power PC processors...

Of course, new pictures can't import into Aperture, as Apple gave up the already rather mediocre RAW converter which was in use systemwide. But then, lately I was looking for some pictures and only knew they were older than 5 years. Within less than 20 seconds I found them - and I didn't tag all pictures with keywords.

C1's search box is only good enough to seek for filenames - but please don't expect you could open the album or project the file's linked in... I get it, Aperture's designers were benefitting a lot of the power of Spotlight, of systemwide intelligent albums / folders, of the UI which was the same style in most apps - so no need to develop something ugly as in C1. A lot of functions C1 needs to develop for Apple and Windows were already ready and available for Aperture developers, mostly better than C1 ever will be.

I really would like to know why Apple stepped aside to make space for second best apps? Lack of money can't be a significant reason.

[MatjazO]

Recently I have updated LR from last standalone (6.x) version. Pana GX9 was the reason, which is new enough to require subscription based LR. I was very reluctant to make the move, of course it costs more, however I am pleasently surprised by the usefulness of synced photos among my devices. Also sharing photos with friends is much easier now.

[mst]

What I like the most is that there is no database.

The database is honestly the part that I liked the most about Aperture and kept me tied to an already obsolete product. No other DAM, past or current, comes close to what Aperture could do.

And since I used that part of Aperture a lot, you can imagine what pain I'll be going through, trying to move more than a decade of image data to a new platform.

[thxbb12]

I understand your pain. I didn't move my old photos. It's just from now on, I use RawTherapee instead.
As far as file management goes (or DAM), the most elegant and future-proof solution is to store tags in the filesystem itself. Hence, no dependency on any particular software such as Aperture or LR. That's actually what OSX does: you can tag files with whatever keywords you like and search for files matching those. Only an indexer is required to index these tags and allow queries on them. Unfortunately, there is not good similar implementation in the GNU/Linux and Windows worlds.

[mst]

That's still no substitute for album collections combining manually selected images (for a photo book for example), or smart albums based on lots of criteria.

I'm afraid once one got used to all the advantages of a database system, there is no way back. I used to be a winamp guy, with all my mp3s stored in a folder structure, artist-album-songname style. Once I switched to the Mac and used iTunes for a little, I never looked back.