Apple sacks Aperture dev team? By
Michael R. Tomkins, The Imaging Resource (Friday, April 28, 2006 - 14:02 EDT)Mac news site Think Secret has published an article stating that Apple has disbanded the team responsible for creating Aperture, its flagship imaging application.
According to the article, based on information from unspecified sources and cited in subsequent articles from the likes of CNet, Slashdot and The Inquirer, some engineers have been transferred to different projects inside Apple, while others have left the company altogether. Aperture has drawn mixed reviews, with the software apparently not coming up to Apple's usual standards, and the quality of Raw image conversion in particular coming in for some criticism.
ThinkSecret speculates that problems hail from Aperture's underlying architecture, and hence may prove difficult to correct without an extensive rewrite. The issue is said to be troubling enough that Apple is believed to have taken responsibility for the image processing pipeline from the Aperture development team in the runup to the product launch, with the team responsible for Apple's Shake and Motion products being called in to attempt improvements at the eleventh hour.
Apple has yet to comment on the rumors, but since the launch of Aperture the company has dropped the price by a whopping $200, and offered a $200 coupon ($100 for the Academic license) for existing users to put towards purchases in the online Apple Store.
