Re: Arrested Development
Good points.
On the one hand, Apple might not see why it should bother competing with Lightroom. Lightroom comes free with the complete Creative Cloud packages, which are basically mandatory for a lot of art/film/design/photo professionals. Apple isn't going to try to compete head-to-head with everything Adobe makes, so to an extent, Lightroom is going to have a bult-in user base no matter what Apple does. Even if you want to use Final Cut Pro X instead of Premier, for example, it's hard to ditch Photoshop-- and if you're going to use Photoshop, you're gonna get Lightroom for free.
On the other hand, even if a lot of people are already using Lightroom, if Apple's new Photo tools are easy to use and fairly powerful, a lot of Mac users might switch over. Even if you already have Lightroom, if you have a Mac, the new Photos app will be free, so it's not like Apple has to convince you to buy a new piece of software. If the Photos app does 95% of what Lightroom does and is easier to use, that might tip the scales, at least for Mac users. I also wonder how much functionality Apple will leave open for third-party plug-ins. If they let the developer community fill in whatever functionality is missing from the core Photos app, that might help Apple compete.
User Rank: Ninja
6/30/2014 | 10:01:18 AM
I happen to use Adobe Lightroom (because I only had a PC when I started out, so it was the only option). I don't like Adobe's move towards a subscription model for everything, and one conspiracy theory out there (which is sadly believable) is that without the competition of Apple selling Aperture as a standalone product still, Adobe may choose to shift Lightroom to a subscription-ONLY model, which would suck.
Adobe for their part are doing what you'd expect, which is to start making noises to appeal to disgruntled Aperture users. It's interesting though that in this story there's more inforation than in others I've read, especially regarding the move of those features new iLife app in OSX - but after a big gap. That would be a killer move against Lightroom - effectively making Aperture (or equivalent) free and standard - except if it's not being developed any more, then what's going on? I'm confused :)