Too late to start up with Aperture?

Question

I'm aware of both Aperture and iPhoto being trashed by Apple in the near future. I have been using iPhoto on my MacBook Pro since it was introduced and usually do some additional editing as required using Adobe Photoshop Elements. But now I'm starting to shoot in RAW, and iPhoto won't even take RAW files into it's library without converting them to Jpegs. I think the best bet for me would be to upgrade to Aerture but I also know it's no longer going to be supported. In fact, I've read that Apple is no longer interested in the entire advanced enthusiast and pro photography spaces. Thoughts and advice for me? I have been spoiled by the wonderful Apple apps that work so nicely. By the way, I haven't upgraded to Yosemite, nor do I intend to. I think in my case it will take me in the wrong direction.

Answer 1

Reasons for migrating to Aperture of course depend upon your intended use.  As pointed out here, development for Aperture has ceased.  Apple has decided to migrate to another application, using cloud based back end for image storage.  There has been more than one or two posts of disappointment on this course of action.  In the end it's Apples decision however right or wrong the users believe that decision to be.  Your best bet is to look at the features, determine if those are of use to you, scan the threads here for comments, then determine if the cost is worth it. 
As opined Aperture probably has about a year of life left.  After that you may be able to use it so long as you do not upgrade your operating system.  But make no mistake - there will not be an Aperture 4.x.  Nor, in my opinion will there be any significant (or heroic) efforts to fix what are now significant issues with Aperture.
The trade off, in my opinion is not worth it.  Especially when you can get Lightroom now for a modest price.  That is if you don't mind paying a monthly usage fee and really don't need facial recognition.  The former being the pricing plan Adobe is moving to and the latter being completely absent from Lightroom.  I don't know of any other viable professional package on the market right now.  On the upside, Adobe products do support IPTC extended metadata which Apple never adopted.  Understandable, it was an Adobe push - but the data stored is pretty nice.  Mostly dealing with model and release information (and others, read the IPTC specs if you are interested) - if you deal with that kind of thing.
As for my experiences - Aperture use to be an incredible product.  Especially with the introduction of Facial Recognition - which is now horribly broke.  Here are some of my experiences.
FACES:
- Aperture now scans my entire photo library for new faces in every image every time the application fires up.  This isn't a problem if you have a few hundred images.  Once you start hitting about ten thousand (10,000) it becomes a nuisance.  It takes about 45 seconds.  Multiply that time out based on your library size.
- Aperture now rescans every identified face for a match, every time you identify a new face.  Ok, I get this process.  You have marked this guy as John Smith, now we are going to look for possible matches for John Smith.  The only problem is that it appears to being in every face which it cannot justify as someone else.
- Aperture often double tags a face.  To explain this you have to understand what the software is (probably) doing and how it records facial locations.  First it applies some order of facial recognition.  It  looks for things which appear to be faces.  Eyes, nose, mouth.  It then draws a box around that area.  You have the option to select that boxed area and in the upper left hand corner click on the "x" to close the box.  Except when two boxes are exactly on top of each other.  It's maddening.  You cannot get rid of either box.  Nor, can you identify the name of the person in both iterations of the box.  If you understand all the places where you can name people (every software package has multiple places to do the same task) then you can select one of the boxes and tell Aperture that this area "is not a face".  But since you are now telling the AI that the information contained within the defined area is not a face (when in fact it is) you are setting yourself up for a real HAL9000 moment.  And if you don't get that reference, you are simply confusing the system.  Especially when you leave box 2 in place and give that person a name.  So is it a face or isn't it?  Aperture appears to be using both decisions (is and isn't a face) in future iterations of facial identification (finding faces in an image) and facial recognition (is this face Johnny Smith or Jane Smith).
PLACES:
- A number of folks have reported problems with the geolocation of images.  With the upgrade to the latest OS I have also begun to experience this problem.  Images which I shot in my home studio were correctly mapped within a few feet of my home.  With Aperture 3.6 many of them are not even on the same block.  I actually have photographs which were previously (properly) mapped in central Maryland, that with the 3.6 upgrade are now tagged in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.  Yes you can manually move them to their correct location - but again, thats great with a few hundred images.  Thousands becomes a real nightmare.
This same geomapping problem has reared its head in faces as well with some users reporting the placement of the facial identification box in the wrong location on the image.  Far be it from me to disparage software developers but it's almost as if the crew forgot that the image coordinates (whether for dropping a box on a photo or a pin on a map) start at 0,0 being the upper left corner of the display. /snark
STORAGE:
- A couple "upgrades" back Aperture migrated a reasonable and easily understandable storage methodology in which photos were filed (on your hard disk) in a directory architecture based on the date/time of image.  So, if something horrible happened a savvy user could open the Aperture package, navigate through the directory and recover lost or damaged data.  Not anymore.  I defy anyone to explain the system now.  It appears to have something to do with the ingest date, solar or lunar cycle and a hashed algorithm of some programmers mothers birthdate which is then translated into an XML filename.  All that to say - good luck finding your photo IF you need to AND you are storing images internal to the Aperture database.  But lets get serious about filing images under a directory system based on import date/time.  This is great - if you import your photos on the date of the shoot.  But, if you go on a two week trip of Europe and ingest all your photos the day you get home, well that's not too bad.  A year later when you have to recover all your photos from a significant system failure and end up ingesting 10,000 photos on 15 May 2014 that is another story entirely.  Now, good luck finding your photos on the hard disk (if you need to that is).
SECURITY:
- Apple applied the "sandbox" theory to image security.  Basically in a nutshell all your photos are locked from editing by only approved applications.  So don't even think you are going to download some awesome script to do some wonderful task and have it work.  Sorry.  It took me months of phone calls with apple support before one of those on the line even thought to walk me through my editing process and determined the script/app I was using was not apple approved and this was causing my problem.  I get it, new risks in computer data and all.  But there comes a point when you have taken security so far as to lock the user out of the loop.
CRASHES:
- We all have them, and they all happen at the worst possible moments.  In the past 2 days I have been working in Aperture with my data and experience Aperture crashes about every 45 minutes or so.  Yes, I have repaired my permissions, yes I have repaired the database and Yes I have rebuilt the database.  It just appears to be another nuisance of Aperture that wasn't there a couple years ago.  I have even gone so far as to completely uninstall Aperture, reload it from scratch and re-ingest all my images (that is how I discovered the whole ingest date/time versus shoot date/time storage della described above).  My entire library now (in the Aperture Package) falls under a single year (2014) when previously it was spread across 40 years (from the 70's to current date).  Yes, I have images from the 70's in aperture. I scanned a lot of film over the years.  Regardless, I could never track down exactly why the crashes were happening.  Some feedback from Apple would be nice - I have after all must have sent them a few hundred crash reports by now.  My RAM is good (yup, I have tested it), drive space is fine and I have plenty of it so ..... Im left scratching my head.
Aside from all of that - I loved Aperture, while it lasted.  I will be saddened by it's loss and to date I haven't heard anything yet which gives me hope about Photos.  As someone who is occasionally paid, and who occasionally pays to shoot (read into that what you will) I refuse to store my image library on anyone else cloud.  I have my own storage architecture which has worked fine for me.  I haven't lost an image now in the many many years I have been using it.  If you shoot a lot I recommend you look into Drobo.  I was an early adopter and have never looked back.  I have two 16TB units on my desk - one for live data, one for TimeMachine.
Cloud storage is simply too risky.
1.  You are reliant on too many factors which are (a) out of your control and (b) are run by people who really don't care about your data or your business.  Not to mention the constant finger pointing.  If a switch goes out somewhere in Nebraska I hope you had a local copy of your data because now you can't work.  But then again, that defeats the whole purpose of cloud storage doesn't it?  How many Apple users signed up and put up web pages in what is now the cloud? You remember those days?  You data is your data and will always be there?  Until we change our ToS and now longer support personal websites.
2. Pricing.  Seriously look at the pricing.  The cloud tops out at 1TB for $20/month.  Not bad.  What do I do with the other 15TB of data I have?  Oh, and after 3 months I could have purchased a Western Digital portable USB 1TB.  If Moore was right (and so far he has been pretty close) that 1TB next year will only cost me $30 at the local Best Buy.  If you can find it.  You know 6TB drives come out this fall?  Only a couple hundred dollars each.  About 1 years payments on the cloud. Now I realize I might get slammed there - not everyone has $60 extra dollars for a portable 1TB drive.  But I am assuming you do since you are tinkling about spending $70 for an app which is only viable for another year.
3. Cloud storage really?  I don't know about you but the last time I ran an all day shoot I used up about 128GB of card space which took me a couple hours of transfer time (card to local disk).  Now, how long would it take me to run that up to the cloud before I can use it.  And that was on an older camera which was half the megapixels of what I am shooting now.  So, 1/4 of my storage maximum being transferred up to the cloud after only one shoot.  Awesome.  Ill get a coffee, take a road trip, and in a couple days my images will be ready for first draft editing.  Meanwhile my client will be ..... strumming his fingers?  Don't worry though sir - a couple more days and your proofs will be available online.  For everyone with any mad skillz to hack into.  The only secure computer is one not online. 
So, there are the down sides from my perspective.  Yup, it's one sided.  If you want to know the good stuff (and there is a lot of good stuff) just read the sales brochures.  It's fine product - so long as you understand the limitations.  And overall I am happy with it.  And I will, again, be saddened when it leaves the market. 
Aperture's days are numbered.  I am past denial and isolation. I guess this places me in the anger stage.  There is no use in bargaining.  It is Apples decision and they have made it.  Depression is next.  I doubt I will make it to acceptance - unless there are some significant changes to Photos and I don't see that in the works.  Apple appears to be dropping their professional line of products and pushing to the general market.