Matt Godden#Aperture remains the single finest #UI style #Apple has produced in its entire history. In my greatest tech fantasy of Apple devices, it would be #Mac, #iPad, and #iPhone all using Aperture's grey UI meat, button styles, and gentle #Skeuomorphism.
Camthecam@metaning RIP. We miss it.
Ivo 🇪🇺@metaning I would love a Pro theme in macOS. A boring theme with focus on content and without any distractions.
@Ivovanwilligen The sad thing is Apple seems to genuinely believe this liquid glass catastrophe IS “focussing on content”.
Rory Prior@metaning I miss Aperture. What Apple was thinking letting such a top tier product just wither on the vine I’ll never know.
@roryprior Apple doesn’t / can’t assign people to products, and priorities. Aperture died because no one wanted to work on it, or be in charge of it. Reading the history of the product / blogs, it sounds like it had a pretty toxic staff dynamic, from what I recall.
@metaning ah I didn’t realise there was drama behind it, it sort of died when Apple’s attention seemed to have shifted away from the Mac so always assumed they just dropped the ball.
@roryprior A different group of people created Photos and were politically ascendant within the company, so they supplanted iPhoto, and Aperture kindof went away as well, since it was part of the same infrastructure - it was a much older system, and wasn't built on core OS technologies. It's like how the old iMovie was replaced wholesale, Final Cut 7 as well.
Mindaugas Rudokas@metaning Only pros want it = Apple is not doing it.
Jean-Étienne@metaning what a powerhouse of an app! Miss it.
@jeanetienne yup. Its raw engine was a bit long in tooth, but in terms of workflow, it’s still way ahead of anything else. Sadly it doesn’t read my D850 files, so I’ve retired it.
Ölbaum@oscherler @wezm This is how I’m solving it, more or less.
VoidZeroOne 
@metaning oh the one that looked like NeXT?
@TheOneDoc well it was sortof NeXT-y, but also quite MacOS Platinum. IIRC it was a visual style only used by Aperture, Final Cut and Logic, “Pro UI Style” or something similar.
AdventureTense@metaning I really enjoyed using Aperture back in the day, especially version 2. First time with nondestructive editing. Was such a great time to be on the Mac.
@adventure_tense no matter how much companies like Apple talk about “delight” or “magic” in their products, Aperture was one of those astoundingly rate pieces of software that was pretty much entirely without pain points. Every feature, every workflow was “if you could have this exactly as you would like it”. It was a tool whose operation was so sublime, it made you want to do the task, just to use the tool to do it.
I don’t think Apple is remotely capable of doing that any more.
@metaning Back around 2008 or so, I said to a friend, we need to savour this moment. Eventually Apple will lose their magic. It was inevitable. And I pretty much lived in that moment for as long as I could.
Their philosophy back then was, if you build a really awesome, well thought out product, people will want it. The revenue will take care of itself.
I left Apple a few years ago. Running home built PC with Fedora 42. Love darktable. The open source community has been so awesome.
@adventure_tense I looked at Darktable on macOS, but couldn’t get past the UI not having tear-off panels. I use 3 displays, specifically for photo processing where I keep the thumbnail & file browser on the left, the viewer / editor in the middle, and all the controls and palettes on the right. Capture One is where I’m at now. It’s a better editor, but not as good a workflow solution (as Aperture).
@metaning Totally understand. What works for one doesn't necessarily work for others. We each follow our own path. I used Capture One for a few years. It was my chose photo editor when I was on my Mac Studio. :-)
@adventure_tense I mean it does seem like a feature they *could* implement - tear-off palettes are a thing in Qt apps like Krita 🤷
@metaning Well, darktable 5.2 comes out on the Solstice, so we can see . ;-)
The reasons I like darktable are a bit eccentric, and could be the exact reasons someone else might grimace.
@adventure_tense There’s also Ansel, a somewhat snarky fork by one of the Darktable founders who doesn’t like where the project went. But again, single window.
@metaning They certainly like the all in one. Seems to be the general design trend right now.
I kinda like having the thumbnail view on one monitor, and the editing window on the other. But I say that knowing that not everyone likes that setup. :-)
@metaning I did try Ansel, but it was far too rigid a concept. I like the chemistry lab feel of darktable. Each module being a different chemistry project. It drives others crazy, but I think its endearing.