Well, Apple has sure been busy lately! A load of new products released last week, and then another load of new stuff again just yesterday. I guess they’re ramping up their line for the holiday season. There were the little things, bumps in the PowerBook line, and bumps in the G5’s (up to 2 dual-core powerPC processors – yes, 4!). The other item released was a piece of software called Aperture.
Aperture is an interesting piece of software, and an interesting step for Apple. I can remember reading rumors about Apple working on a “Photoshop killer” some time ago. I don’t know if this is it, or if Aperture will become that “Photoshop killer” that I read about. Right now Aperture isn’t quite equipped for killing Photoshop. It’s more like iPhoto on steroids that cost a WHOLE lot more ($499). I see Photoshop as photo manipulation software, and Aperture doesn’t quite have the bells and whistles in the manipulation category. Aperture (from what I can tell) is more of a powerful image catalogging application that has a few manipulation elements. It reminds me a lot of Adobe Bridge (in the CS2 Suite). I like the interface on Aperture better (typical Apple), but the feature set looks pretty much the same. Aperture has is a pretty slick image organizer, but I wonder if Apple is looking to replace Photoshop sometime in the future. I guess it’s always good when there is competition, and since Photoshop really doesn’t have any it only works out for the consumer. I would just hate for Adobe to drop Photoshop for the Mac like they did with Premiere when Apple’s Final Cut Pro started getting popular. Photoshop does have a much larger Mac audience than Premiere did, but still it’s an interesting move by Apple. I really don’t see this as a Photoshop killer, but what kind of features are they going to add in subsequent versions? Could it become a Photoshop killer someday? Maybe then they could justify the price. Apple is charging $499 for Aperture! To me that just seems a bit high for an image cataloger. I guess we’ll see when and if people buy it.
Agreed, to compete with photoshop, Apple will need to really step up the features and purpose of Aperture.