When Photos just came out and Apple was making the claims about how they've taken everything good from Aperture and stuck it into Photos I was pretty optimistic considering how solid of an app Aperture became over the years.
Now, few days down the road, pretty clear that Photos is just a marginally better iPhoto with the vast majority of features that were useful for professionals such as Stacks, never coming back.
The dumbification of professional apps to the lowest common denominator continues ...
I'm trying to find an alternative and, quite frankly, everything I've tried is not great. I ended up buying AfterShot Pro, but I'm not terribly satisfied with it. It runs on the Mac, but it's really hurt by the fact that it's not actually a Mac application.
Adobe is out because of the subscription model. I'm willing to buy the software, and I'm even willing to periodically buy new versions when it makes sense, but $10/month forever is hard to stomach.
Several months later, something happened that basically reaffirmed my decision. Nikon released a new camera, which I bought at launch. Lightroom added support for its RAW format in a minor patch almost immediately. Meanwhile, Aperture couldn't be bothered to add support until 6 months later and a major version update.
Flash-forward, I really wish Adobe didn't become so obsessed with their subscription models. While cloud storage/backup definitely has its advantages, I'd much rather simply own my software and use my own servers. (But since the "run it yourself" options are always grossly inferior, I just put up with their new approach and make sure I have a local copy.)
Specifically, the date is December 18. There's also a (small) discount if you buy in the next 8 days: https://skylum.com/luminar
Not involved at all, just discovered this while looking around.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aperture_(software)
I would happily pay for an update that fixed outstanding bugs and ensured compatibility with future versions of macOS. It would be nice to have some new features, too, but it is basically "good enough" as it is and I dread the day I can no longer run it. I'm really not sure what I will do.
The claim that Photos was going to be a meaningful replacement for Aperture was obviously a lie at the time it was released and even nearly five years later it is still not true.
I'd have moved to Lightroom had Adobe not moved to a subscription model.