nospam wrote:
-hh wrote:
apple did improve the speed in later versions but customers voted with
their wallets and aperture ultimately was canceled.

Apple originally asked $500, while Adobe started at $300. Sure, Apple
later cut their price...but so too did Adobe.

aperture later dropped to $199 while lightroom remained at $299, then
apple cut the price to $79 when it was on the app store, forcing adobe
to slash lightroom's price to $150.

Kindly put dates to those.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aperture_(software)#Version_history
1.5 September 29, 2006...Price dropped from $499 to $299.
2.0 February 12, 2008...Reduced price to $199 in the US.
3.1.1 January 6, 2011...with a price drop to $79.99.

https://www.macworld.com/article/116...oshop_lightroo
m_4_and_cuts_price_in_half.html
MAR 5, 2012 9:01 PM PT
But perhaps the biggest news is that Adobe has permanently cut the
price of Lightroom in half. Version 4 is priced at $149, as opposed
to the $299 shipping price of version 3.

v.3 was also discounted, it just wasn't permanent:
https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3134014

Discounted to $149 (again); Adobe had more “sales” than just one. That’s why
the headline on your cite says that the news was a *permanent* price cut.

Net result was that Apple simply wasn’t being competitive...in performance or price.

Lightroom was the better product and could justify the higher price.

And that was because Apple couldnšt write as good of software..why?

because photo editing software is not their strength. other companies
do a better job. no company does everything well.

To turn a phrase, “nonsense”: Apple has been a graphical image based company
since at least 1984 and lead the development of GUI’s. Plus they also had internal
knowledge of future hardware & OS directions for longer term planning.

It? utterly shocking that discerning customers chose cheaper AND better
over just having an Apple logo.

not at all. people don't buy for the apple logo and lightroom cost *more*.

Nope. Apple slashed the price on an inferior *and* unmaintained software
product and savvy customers saw through their bull****.

it was maintained, but its destiny was set early on.

Yeah, a $500 price tag will tend to do that in that market.
Classical “Apple Tax” at work. Again.

And this pattern is par for Apple, unfortunately: whenever their products
have to compete on actual merit and price instead of the prestige of the
logo...they lose.

also wrong. apple competes on functionality, just like every other company.

Mac Pro.

mistake. nobody's perfect.

Still waiting for them to deliver on their vaporware, 18 months (and counting)
after they had their 4 years later “we goofed!”.

iPhone,

Antennagate. Batterygate. $79 standard battery replacement fee.

apple watch,

Battery life is now up to ... what, 36 hours?

ipad,

Retails for much more than their Android/Amazon counterparts.

AirPods,

How much will their batteries cost to be serviced?

imac pro and many other products ...

A desktop with no user access to upgrade RAM, nor any evidence of
post-initial sale upgrades, despite Apple making that promise. And
thanks to the T2 chip, high risk of complete data loss on a hardware failure.

Similarly, glued together laptops...WTF! And further insult to injury is that it’s
with an utter crap keyboard, to try to slim “1mm” off the device: repairing that
unreliable bleeper isn’t cheap, either, as its removal breaks more stuff.

...compete on both functionality and price, some of which are well
ahead of any competition at any price.

For sufficiently tiny values of “some”. My 13” MBP cost more than my
Dell 13”...and the latter has a much better keyboard, which allows it to
actually be usable to touch type with. But gosh golly, the MBP line comes
with a “touchpad” that’s more gimmick than anything else, and not available
on their other products to allow software developer code unification.

Similarly, “mail” still lacks productivity features that MS-Outlook had a decade ago.
And “Photos” still doesn’t have a ranking system as good as iPhoto had. Nor is
its library file cross-compatible...it was a one-way conversion which often failed if
you had been a multi-generation iPhoto user.

And replacing my Mac Pros with a trash can MP would incur a $2K per
seat “Apple Tax” above how much they would replace with a Windows PC;
roughly $7500 vs $5500. Can buy years of Adobe software for that delta,
along with an on-site service contract...something that Apple *still* doesn’t
offer at any price.

As I said, Apple doesn’t really compete on performance. They’re a cachet
which did achieve market differentiation, but the advantages they had in OSX
are pretty much gone...and therefore, no longer worth paying significantly more for.

-hh