Aperture 3 and the pain of a photographer
I think Apple products are generally great. Their design, the usability and, in general, the experience of using them is simply fantastic, but if I have never been proud of one side of Apple is the way they treat their customers. My issue with Aperture 3 does not fall short on this.Everything started few weeks ago, when Apple finally released the third instalment of their photo management software: Aperture. I have been an Aperture user since it version 1 and I have always loved it Differently from other photography management software it has always been an application for photographers, not for designers, focussed on tweaking photos, not on creating artistic painting out of them. I have always found its workflow much more usable than Lightroom or other competitors like Capture One, but this is just a personal perspective; my perspective. I installed the new version straight away and I played with it just a little in trial. Time was against me as I was shooting like mad in those days and I decided to read the online feedbacks more than spending time testing thoroughly its features and reliability. The few images I played with in the test library I created showed me the potentials of the application, so I decided to upgrade my library to the new version. My library contains 50.000 images, all of whom are relocated in an external hard drive, therefore it is "just" 30GB of data. It is not a huge library, but I would not call it small either. My MacBookPro is a powerful "Portable Computer" (don't call it laptop) with 4GB of RAM, 512MB of Video RAM, a processor with 2.66GHz and, at the time of the installation, I had 100GB free on the hard drive.
Library upgrade When I started the library upgrade my laptop portable computer become immediately very slow. Initially I attributed the poor performances to the huge amount of work the machine was doing, but soon I realise that not being able to open any other application was not to be considered normal and I interrupted the process. I waited to get home on Friday evening to run the process once more, planning to leave it working overnight. In the morning, before rushing out to teach a Shaping Streets workshop, I did not realise how the computer was telling me that the disk was full, but I had to rush out. My library, I thought, is just 30GB and I have 100GB of free space: it simply could not be. Almost 24 hours after having launched the upgrade process, when I returned home, the computer was absolutely unresponsive and I did not even manage to type my password in the login screen due to the (in)famous spinning wheel. There was nothing else to do other than rebooting the computer. After spending some time online, I decided to follow a suggestion I found on a blog and I moved my library on an external hard drive with a lot of free space and I tried again. It took me some hours, but it worked: my library was now a proper Aperture3 Library. There was no turning back.
Early adopters, Beta versions and Paid releases Please let me pause for a moment in my story here to underline one thing: I am an early adopter, I like to try to play with Beta versions of applications I use and I never complain if they let me down: I know they can be bugged and if anything happen to my data... tough! Aperture 3 is not a beta version, it is a release one; an application I have bought and paid for. I may accept some rough corners from a product just released, but just "some". I am an early adopter and I know that using beta version has its risks, but when a product go public, when a product start making money, then the owners are accountable for the mistakes in their applications.
The pain of editing Back to the story, I started importing few different shots I did in the previous days in my new library, but when I started editing the photos I immediately noticed that my computer was really slow and its temperature while using Aperture was exceptionally high. The application I use to measure the fans speed and the temperature showed me that my computer was over 100C. I did write it correctly: One Hundred centigrades. My first call to Apple was more because of the general low performances of my laptop portable computer and the high temperature of it, but soon I realise that the performance issues and the temperature out of control were due to Aperture 3, who was filling every bit of my RAM and then was starting swapping files generating an unlimited swap file. Whenever I tried to edit an image, just the loading of the full size image was taking long seconds, and every added edit was delaying the wait for the process of building the thumbnail more and more.
The pain of customer support You may have noticed now that I do not call my MacBook Pro a laptop, and this is because during my first call to the Apple support, the most important thing they told me, and they underlined it more than once, was that the MBP is not a laptop, but a "portable computer". Despite they did not explained why they were so obsessed with the name, they were very concerned by the temperature of it. When they told me that not being a laptop I should have avoided keeping it on my lap, I understood: Apple, through its customer representative, was much more interested in not being sued because my legs were fried more than helping me solving my problem. The only thing they were able to suggest me was to reinstall OSX. What is it? Windows? The second call to the customer support, to the Aperture team this time, was as useless as the first one. They gave me a lot of suggestions, but non of them worked. I tried to tweak with the application in any conceivable way, but nothing worked. I run the application in 64bit and in 32bit, with faces and without faces, with location and without location, with previews and without previews, in my old OSX as well as in a new OSX I installed on an external Firewire. Nothing. The third call was a real surprise, as I had the infinite pleasure of meeting one of the worst customer support operator I could have dreamt of. He treated me like a stupid, mocking me ("Well, MY aperture 3 works perfectly"), making me feel a difficult customer ("You have called yesterday and you should not call every day, it is useless. IF we will have news we will call you") and if I were his manager I would have immediately fired him after he said to me: "If your images are so important you shouldn't have switched to Aperture 3 on your production machine directly, you should have waited, don't you think?". Apple, if you are reading this and you want the name of this brilliant employee, call me, otherwise I will call you back in a couple of days to speak with his manager for a formal complaint.
Some light at the end of the tunnel In one of my last attempt to make it work I switched off my main video card, using just 64MB instead of the 512MB I normally use. To my surprise Aperture was more responsive and allowed me to edit my photos, even if it crashed every few minutes. It has been a pain editing the imaged, but I did manage to finish all of them. Truth must be told: IF it works, Aperture 3 is fantastic. Another truth is that a product like Aperture 3 should have never been release with such a poor testing phase.
The collapse I was even happy to be able to painfully editing my photos, with every stroke of a brush taking quite some time to fix, but in the end I had my edited images. The only thing I needed was to export them and send them to my customers. It is precisely there that the smile was completely wiped off from my face: Aperture 3 is not exporting my photos. There is no way I can make it plainer: I have my photo in that bloody application and every time I try to make a jpeg out of the edited master my computer fills the available RAM and start generating an ever-growing SWAP file. Aperture 3 has kidnapped my photos.
What's next? I have lost a lot of trust in Apple. They are treating their customer in a very bad way. Not once I have heard, from anyone, a simple "I am sorry" and I have never heard anyone acknowledging the issue. This is something I did not expect from a company like Apple and it has raised a lot of questions in me. It is about trust, about knowing that even if things fail, you are always valued as a customer. It is about understanding that the previous does not apply to Apple any longer.
I am a frustrated Photographer, who is having his photos kidnapped inside an application he paid for, without customer support and with people treating me badly because I am asking for a resolution to a problem.
Comments
Forgive me asking, but seriously? You really upgraded your 50k image library with a newly released product? How long have you been using computers? Presumably you DO have a backup?
Lessons learnt and all that. Aperture has been buggy since day one and no-one ever commits to an irreversible upgrade on a new product.Once it gets to 3.01 or .02 all will be fine dandy and it will work well
The good news is that images can be extracted from the library without using aperture – google for info or go to http://www.apertureexpert.com/
PS Final rule – never call support – google is faster and more accurate
Hi N!
Well, as it is a released product, and not a beta, the expectations are high, aren’t they? I have worked quite some time in the IT arena, not just “using computers” and I have rarely experienced such failure in released products. I have imported and edited some images only with Aperture 3, therefore my backup(s) are not aligned: I am still using them for older projects, but for the newer there is nothing I can do.
Regarding the export, you can export the RAW images, but for exporting the edited version, only Aperture 3 can do it.
I will wait for a new version of course, hoping it will come soon.
And regarding the support, well, if no one calls Apple will never realise the width of the issue…
Hi Carlo,
Apple products (which I love BTW) are frequently buggy on v1.0 / 2.0 etc – Aperture has been particularly bad since day 1 and 3 is in actuality a late beta – Apple are too proud to do public betas like Adobe though. 3.0.1 will be the first version that can be used for production work
My suggestion for now is to go to your library and right click ‘show package contents.’ Do this to all the files within and you will find your originals. For the longer term, never import images to the Ap library – import the images, but leave them in the current location – this creates a proxy and allows you to use any application too work with them. Currently I use Aperture, Capture One, Lightroom and Photoshop to work with the same RAW files – whichever one I fancy or need (they all have different capabilities)
Support know little – they read from a database of info – use the feedback mechanism to tell Apple they have an issue. Google gets you to people who really know how this stuff works
Hi N,
When I switched from Aperture 1.5 to Aperture 2 the upgrade process was painless. I know that Apple is anal about their beta to higher the hype on products, but this should never hit the quality of the products themselves as this hit the reputation of the company itself.
As for the images, I already have my RAW files outside Aperture (I work with relocated master), but seen that they are already edited I am hoping for a quick fix before re-importing them in Aperture 2 and re-edit every single file from scratch.
Support should at least care about the customers, things that it did not happen with me, and if you cannot count on the customer support, what is the value of the product you have bought? And Google is not solving my problems right now, therefore it is just a repository of people that are in my situation that are looking for an answer, but the only place an answer can come from is from Aperture 3.0.1…
Cheerio
Agree – but hype is (normally) bigger than a few vocal customers. Shareholders need to see their return.
FWIW – check colour accuracy of Aperture 3 in comparison with a few others – quite revealing…..
Hi Carlo, I do really agree with the statement
Hi Carlo, I do really agree with the statement software behavior should be expectable for users. Maybe, you will find some helpfull information in the Apple Support Forum. Guided by this recommandations we have solved most of the heavier problems.
As a pro photog for whose business workflow is essential, I switched away from Aperture to Lightroom ages ago for the same reason: Aperture crashes, hangs, freezes on large imports. And Apple will not (cannot) help. Lightroom has great pro workflow once you know it, and it never crashes. Apple engineers are not pro photographers (listen to the anecdote in last week’s TWIP podcast).
So I fear, Carlo, that you will be frustrated for years to come.
Hi Michael,
I think that it is a matter of perspectives and a the way one feels with the workflow of an application or another. I had few issues with Aperture, but I have always “clicked” with its workflow, for me it is natural.
I have tried Lightroom more than once, but I have never been able to get together well with it. If I HAD to I am sure I would, but I will wait a little bit longer to see if I can trust Apple or not. In the end it is how you deal with these hard times
If you switch Aperture to 32 bit mode (by going to the application icon in the finder, choosing get info from the file menu and selecting “run in 32 bit”) you might find that this solves many of your problems. Also, if you don’t need it, turn faces off. This should also eliminate most of your issues.
Hi Thomas,
Thank you very much for your suggestions, but I have already tried every single thing and it does not help. Faces on or off, 32 or 64bits the application is absolutely slow and painful to use. As I wrote in the post: I have tried every single solution found on the web and suggested by Apple representatives…
Thanks however and welcome to the blog!
Carlo
I waited the exit of Aperture to install Snow Leopard and migrate from Aperture 2 to 3. Before the installation of SL I did a backup with Time Machine, and the last backup of my Aperture vault. I did the installation on a Saturday morning. No problem at all. In the afternoon I migrate my Aperture library (240gb) from 2 to 3. I left the iMac working all saturday night to update Faces database. On Sunday I’ve worked all the day with my wedding projects without any problems. Today I print a photobook (made with A2 and migrated in A3) and seems strange, but it works like a charme
I did the migration in a quiet period and not the day before a delivery to a client
Anyway I’m very happy with Aperture 3 and paired with Snow Leopard it’s very responsive. Sometimes Faces works in background but you can stop it from Windows > Show Activity and pause the task.
I hope that you will have more chance in future with Aperture
romantic Picadilly
excellent composition – the curved lines across the top seem to soften the look here – she’s waiting anxiously for her date it seems
the only Apple app that I use regularly is the one I have to – Final Cut Pro – and if I’m ever lost on that one, I know where to look, any effect will be in exactly the same place as it is on Photoshop
Your article is a big Ouch ! i sometimes thought if Aperture would have been the better choice ( i like Apple too ! ), but Lightroom works fine and so far it has never let me down…
i can understand that You lost some of Your trust in Apple, one should expect, that they are a little more careful with their costumers but they aren`t so Your choices are waiting for an update or moving to somewhere else…
p.s.: i like the image, nice b/w but why excactly did You choose this one ?!
Hi Ronald,
Apple has just released Aperture 3.0.1 and as far as I have been able to test, the issues have been resolved; fingers crossed.
I think it is a matter of workflow, I like the one I can have with Aperture, and the version 3 has all the things I was missing previously, this is why I waited a little bit longer.
The image… there are two main reasons why I chose this one:
- I liked it, it was an interesting perspective
- It was one of the few I was able to export from Aperture!
“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade”
well Carlo, this is good news, but the thought, to sit and wait with the feeling of being left alone with this kind of problem, tastes bitter…
i guess You`ve got some work to do now, have fun with that !
oh and for the image: the perspective is really nice but i guess reason no 2 really answers my question
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