Aperture

Apple's professional photo manager, the first of its kind, dropped for Photos and finally unable to launch

Replaced
19902026

Aperture was Apple's professional photo management and RAW editing application, announced on 19 October 2005 and shipped on 29 November 2005 at $499, a full year before Adobe Lightroom. Aperture 3, in February 2010, was the last major version. Apple announced on 27 June 2014 that development had ended in favour of the new Photos app, removed Aperture from the Mac App Store on 10 April 2015, and macOS Catalina in October 2019 stopped it running at all.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 2005
  2. 19 October 2005 Feature
    Announced at PhotoPlus Expo

    The first professional photo manager, $499.

  3. 29 November 2005 Launch
    Aperture 1.0 ships

    A year before Adobe Lightroom.

  4. 2008
  5. 12 February 2008 Version
    Aperture 2

    $199, faster, and finally competitive.

  6. 2010
  7. 9 February 2010 Version
    Aperture 3

    Faces, Places, brushes; the last major release.

  8. 2014
  9. 2 June 2014 other
    Photos for OS X previewed

    WWDC shows the app that will replace it.

  10. 27 June 2014 Shutdown announced
    "No new development of Aperture"

    Apple points professionals to Lightroom.

  11. 2015
  12. 10 April 2015 Shutdown
    Removed from the Mac App Store

    Two days after Photos ships in OS X 10.10.3.

  13. 2019
  14. 7 October 2019 other
    Stops running on macOS Catalina

    Migrate or stay on Mojave.

The site through time

Browse apple.com as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

2005 2007 2009 2011 2013 2015 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

Apple 2005–2015 Founded

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: On 27 June 2014 Apple said that with the coming Photos app and iCloud Photo Library "there will be no new development of Aperture", and that Aperture and iPhoto would both be replaced. Aperture was pulled from the Mac App Store on 10 April 2015, two days after Photos shipped in OS X 10.10.3. Installed copies kept running until macOS Catalina, released on 7 October 2019, which could no longer open it. Apple pointed professionals to Adobe Lightroom.

Our analysis: Aperture invented the category, then lost it to Lightroom, and Apple decided in 2014 that its future in photography was a single consumer app synced through iCloud rather than a professional tool for a few hundred thousand people. It was a coherent decision and it stranded a loyal user base, most of whom went where Apple told them, to Adobe, and did not come back.

History [edit]

The first pro photo manager

Apple showed Aperture at the PhotoPlus Expo in New York on 19 October 2005 and shipped it on 29 November: an "all-in-one post production tool for photographers", $499, with RAW processing, non-destructive adjustments, a light table, versions and stacks, and a library that could hold hundreds of thousands of images. It was the first application of its type, and Adobe answered with the Lightroom beta in January 2006. Aperture 1.0 was slow, needed a serious Mac and got mixed reviews; Aperture 2 (February 2008, $199) fixed most of it, and Aperture 3 (9 February 2010) added Faces, Places, brushes and video, and was widely considered a match for Lightroom 3.

But Adobe was on Windows as well as the Mac, updated faster, and had Photoshop next door. Aperture 3 got point updates for four years and never a version 4. By 2013 the pro photography world had largely settled on Lightroom, and Aperture's most loyal users were the ones who noticed the silence.

Photos instead

At WWDC on 2 June 2014 Apple previewed a new Photos app for OS X and iCloud Photo Library. On 27 June 2014 it told The Loop and others that "there will be no new development of Aperture" and that Aperture and iPhoto users would be migrated to Photos, with a compatibility update for Yosemite in the meantime. Professionals were furious; Apple, unusually, briefed that Adobe Lightroom was the way forward, and Adobe shipped a migration tool that October.

Photos arrived with OS X 10.10.3 on 8 April 2015, and Aperture and iPhoto were removed from the Mac App Store on 10 April 2015. Existing copies limped along until macOS Catalina, released on 7 October 2019, dropped 32-bit and old media frameworks and would not run it; a support note in April 2019 had told users to migrate before upgrading. Apple never made another professional photo application.

The domain today

apple.com/aperture redirects to the Photos page; the Aperture support note remains online.

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Sources [edit]

  1. Apple introduces Aperture Apple Newsroom 19 October 2005
  2. Ars reviews Aperture 3 Ars Technica 5 May 2010 [archived]
  3. Apple to cease development, support of pro photo app Aperture Ars Technica 27 June 2014
  4. Apple to cease development of Aperture and transition users to Photos for OS X TechCrunch 27 June 2014
  5. What Apple's decision to stop Aperture says about its pro apps Macworld 30 June 2014
  6. Adobe releases Aperture to Lightroom migration plugin MacRumors 16 October 2014 [archived]
  7. Aperture and iPhoto removed from Mac App Store following Photos for OS X launch MacRumors 10 April 2015 [archived]
  8. Migrate your Aperture library to Photos or Adobe Lightroom Classic Apple Support 29 April 2019 [archived]

Last verified: 15 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).