Apple Ships Aperture 3
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 10:31AM The long-awaited, much-doubted Aperture 3 is available today. Amongst other things, Faces and Places from iPhoto are available in Aperture 3.
I'll have more to say later once I've had a chance to install and play, but I wanted to remark on one thing straight away: Aperture 3 is being marketed as a direct upgrade for consumers from iPhoto.
A few points of evidence:
- The marketing line on apple.com is "Pro performance. iPhoto simplicity.", implying that iPhoto users could easily step up to Aperture.
- The main Aperture page has four sub-boxes: "What is Aperture?", "New in Aperture 3", "Aperture in Action" and "Go from iPhoto to Aperture".
- There's a full two pages of content on "Why move" and "How to move" from iPhoto to Aperture.
Since 1.0, the Aperture team has been on a mission to continually refine and simplify the Aperture interface. Aperture 2 was a big step in closing the simplicity gap with iPhoto. I don't yet know that Aperture 3 has closed it, but Aperture has never before been so heavily marketed at iPhoto users as this version is.
I've been saying for some time that the more modern, more scalable Aperture should at some point become Apple's only photogaphy application for both professionals and amateurs. Is today the first step on that road?
