Aperture looks great, but...

Does anyone know of a install workaround for machines that don't have all the requirements. I have a rev A IMAC G5 and I find it very unfair that I cannot install aperture. I also could not get it to install on my dual 1ghz G4 or 1.25 ghz G4 powerbook. This is getting out of hand.

Phos: The hobbiest hobbier that ever hobbied a hobby, eh? Don't forget your weak lemon drink. I want Aperture Express. There's definitely a market for it and I'd buy it in a heartbeat. I'd invest $500 in a new lens before I'd drop it on Aperture -- as much as I was drooling over the demos.

kc!: I'm not so sure that Adobe is will to dump Apple with out a thought. They still sell a lot of software to the publishing industry, and most of them are still Macs. They're a corporation, and I doubt they'd like dumping a money-making market, even if it is a small one.

That's true, a real RAW converter will edit the RAW files. The problem I have with Apple is, they made a program (iPhoto) and told everyone that it edits RAW files. In fact, it CONVERTS RAW files and then edits JPEGs. HUGE difference when you're adjusting white balance or levels/curves. Now, instead of letting us edit RAW files like they SAID iPhoto would do, they're making a NEW program to do that, and charging for it. Charging a LOT for it. Classic bait and switch.

i'm not what you'd call a "professional" or anything, but i can't wait to get my hands on this software!

Question,couldn't you just hook up a couple of Macs with XGrid and then use Aperture? You know for the users that can't quite meet the uber steep requirements (Glad to hear that Aperture is 50% off for education but still a little out of reach for me).

Chris - these requirements are still above and beyond what is required. I speak as a developer, these *should* be unnecessary as a "requirement". Personally, I run Photoshop CS2 on my iBook G3-600, 12" with 640MB RAM and it runs *fine*. Not the best, but I do image editing on it. And yes, with RAW as well. To me, this type of incredible requirement worries me when the software developer is the hardware vendor. They jack up hardware requirements to move more hardware. I have to question if these requirements are really necessary, there to cover themselves from customer complaints, or just there for profit reasons. A similar example was the iSight requiring a G3-600, with a 'coded check' for that requirement. People made hacks to work around that check b/c the iSight worked in < 600MHz machines.

Chris K - surely your camera only does RAW->JPEG _once_, at whatever settings were in force at the time you pressed the shutter release. This (and any other post-processing tool) lets you try variations at your leisure.

So Apple gives us iPhoto for free, claiming it "does RAW". In fact, all it does is convert RAW to JPEG, which our CAMERAS can do (and with more customizability!). Now, instead of giving us the feature they baited us into in the first place (I converted to Mac largely because I thought iPhoto would be a great photo manager with RAW conversion), they want to charge us FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS!? Is THIS app even going to do anything more than my camera can do, or should I stick with Photoshop? Oh wait, Photoshop does TONS more than this app.

There already exists an application for those desperately wanting something better than iPhoto, but cheaper than something like Aperture. iView-Multimedia ($199) It's got a polished UI, massive file format support, customizeable html templates, file management tools, meta data support, slideshows, etc... Check it out: http://www.iview-multimedia.com/