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Apple Dumps Most of Aperture Dev. Team
SuperMog2002 writes "An article over at Think Secret is reporting that Apple has fired much of the Aperture development team. The Shake and Motion team was assigned to work on Aperture's image processing pipeline for version 1.1. Apple has also dropped the price of Aperture from $499 to $299, and is offering those who purchased the program at $499 a $200 Apple store coupon." From the article: "Perhaps the greatest hope for Aperture's future is that the application's problems are said to be so extensive that any version 2.0 would require major portions of code to be entirely rewritten. With that in mind, the bell may not yet be tolling for Aperture; an entirely new engineering team could salvage the software and bring it up to Apple's usual standards."
Any Aperture users out there know what the problems were or perhaps have a link to a list of the problems?
-- Stu
/. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.
Perhaps the greatest hope for Aperture's future is that the application's problems are said to be so extensive that any version 2.0 would require major portions of code to be entirely rewritten. With that in mind, the bell may not yet be tolling for Aperture; an entirely new engineering team could salvage the software and bring it up to Apple's usual standards.
ThinkSecret normally doesn't have such inane punditry... We're saying here that a good strategy for a piece of softwares survival is to make it so bad that someone will be compelled to rewrite it? Only if you have politicians on your development team!
The guys from the Shake and Motion teams have jobs already--working on important software that has an installed userbase. I don't think Apple is going to relocate them to a new Copeland and hire a bunch of new engineers to fuck up currently functional products.
www.apple.com/aperture - I opened it on my OS X (10.4.5) workstation in Firefox (1.5) and Safari (no idea, whatever was on this box).
Site is broken in both of them. In firefox the floating movie ad breaks, leaves junk image pieces all over the screen and in general misbehaves. In safari the movie ad just does not work and the page looks extremely broken with huge empty part taking up most of it (guess that's where the ad would have been).
It works a lot better on my Windows workstation in IE. Now I understand that this is a Quicktime and its integration - but shouldn't it be better when working in conjunction with other Apple products?
I don't know about that famed Apple quality - perhaps they should fire the Quicktime team too?
Considering the ongoing litigation "Apple vs. Does" and the fact that "Nick de Plume" of Think Secret fame may be involved, I wouldn't believe ANY information coming out of Think Secret.
From what I've seen, Aperture is a great application that stumbled out of the blocks with some performance issues and fairly poor handling of many devices' RAW formats. The 1.1 update has resolved the bulk of these issues.
If Aperture has any problem, it's that it is a solution in search of a problem. Most amateur photographers' needs are met with iPhoto. Most professional digital photographers are slow to adopt new technologies, because they directly impact the bottom line. It takes time to learn new applications and new methods of working; time that could be better spent working with clients and making money.
Aperture also has direct competition in the form of Adobe Lightroom.
In any case, I find it highly unlikely that Apple has dissolved the development team for an application that just released a 1.1 update and a universal binary to positive reviews. And with the recent price drop, Apple clearly wants to get this application in the hands of the users.
Think Secret is wrong on this one. Perhaps they are wrong on purpose. Could they be intentionally smearing the application in the press? Were they paid off to do so by Adobe?
Hmmm.
Remember when the first story about Aperture appeared, any criticism was silenced by apple fanboys with "It's the first version, so it's ok that it doesn't really work!"? Well, now looks like it was so fucked up that they'll have to rewrite a large part of the code.
I call bullshit...
I am IT guy within a large government corporation (18000 PC users) and we've NEVER heard of Quicktime causing issues on the systems.
Granted we're a controlled environment, but I bet this guy's system is fuxxored beyond belief. I bet it's not just QuickTime that crashes.
FYI - the reasons I put Quicktime on our builds (I'm our local build master) is because we must play MOV files frequently. I passed on installing the Real Player because of the extra garbage we could NOT remove to make it passable for corporate use.
FYI you _can_ remove the QuickTime extras to minimize the Quicktime application's inpact on the user (adverts and file ownership), but the crashing you are having is either an app conflict or you've buggered your sustem with no help from Apple.
Feel free to email me with the details of your problem if you're seriously stuck. I don't mean to put you down if I can help.
"... isn't it? Although I use a Mac Mini most of the time, my work PC with Windows 2000 makes some beautiful music with the latest version of iTunes. What's so bad about it?"
Installs services that take up RAM and CPU even if an iPod isn't attached? Is terribly slow to resize compared to a normal XP application? Is taking too much RAM and CPU for what it is?
Also iTuned doesn't "make some beautiful music", it just plays it, but I guess Steve had you people convinved otherwise. There's some magical filter in it that makes music the best in the universe, doesn't it?
"I remember installing QuickTime and some of the preferences are a wee bit clunky, but no more so than **chuckle** Windows Media Player **shudder**."
It takes ages to start, has horrible interface (slightly improved in version 9 but still very odd) for a Windows application, crashes way too much in Firefox (brings the whole Firefox down one time of 4 when there's a QT movie: crashes in the QT dll), crashes one time out of four when I click a high definition trailer link on apple.com?
It's very slow to go in and out of full screen mode and sometimes displays odd interpolation artifacts (seen neither in WMP or other media players)?
What more reasons can I have to not like it?
Most of the team was not fired, they simply found new positions in Apple once 1.0 was completed because the project management was too shoddy. For instance I am now back working on Mac OS X. Most of the management however has been fired.
But you too will be fired for making this post when your identity is uncovered. Just how many people from that team are "back" working on OS X who write like you do? Was your venting worth risking your job over?
sounds like you're really on a Mac and installed this (scroll past Flip4Mac - that actually works)
Don't call me back. Give me a call back. Bye. So yeah. But bye our, well, but alright we are on a shirt this chill.
The rumour/inside dope I got was, an untouchable star was put in charge of Aperture. He could do no wrong because of a reputation gained from another project, but the rep was built off the backs of others who had covered for his serious coding and management deficiencies.
He was given free reign with Aperture, and since it was built from scratch, the projects structural flaws were built in from the beginning, without anyone having the clout to say "Hey, somethings wrong!". Nobody in the company knew nothing until around the first public demonstration, when it looked awfully pretty, but was nowhere near ready to be handed off to market. With a clear picture of what a mess the project was (and the star floating above the fray, unsullied of course), upper management gutted every other project to get SOMETHING shipped in time. So Aperture shipped, who knows if the star's status will be re-evaluated, and NAB gets less of an Apple splash because of all the talent diverted to clean up a mess,
The major problem, of course is that Aperture originated within Apple. Name a great piece of Apple software (OS X, FCP, Shake, iTunes). It was brought in from elswhere and given a pretty face. Stuff that was created from scratch--ignore until version 3.0
Sounds like someone passing the buck here. While Aperture works, Apple obviously realises the given the codebase is crap, the work expended thus far gives them nothing to build on. Obviously with Lightroom out already in beta, Apple is now in a competition that they probably won't win because of the huge advantages Adobe has in leveraging Photoshop and cross-platform flow. If Adobe starts to really push integration with asset management software across all three programs then Apple will be completely out in the cold for professional workflow.
Apple was right to recognise that there was a space to create something better than what was out there, but without the ability to quickly move and innovate (i.e. having a clean codebase that doesn't require rewrites) they will not be able to solidify any lead.
Actually core image is used quite heavily by Aperture, so it lends credence to your not knowing anything about Aperture but lends doubt to you being the original poster.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley