Apertur more or less unusable.

You said the firmware update is now back up. I wonder if they modified it? I think I will give the downgrade a try tonight. I don't think it will hurt. Thanks for the info.

Call Apple. Your purchase of Aperture 3 comes with support.

I have found them very knowledgeable and helpful.

Thanks once again to all the replies which are very much appreciated. I did file a bug report and have been in touch with Apple. Nice bloke said that there was an issue, it was being looked at. It seems the combination of 10.6.3, Aperture 3 and the graphics card on the iMac I and many others have were currently incompatible and no solution was available yet.

Current advice was to reinstall from original discs, in my case 10.4(!), then to 10.5 then to 10.6 then download the 10.6.2 combo. It wouldn't solve the problem but it would be better.

This was a tortuous procedure and took about 8 hours in total, inevitably some settings were lost and I have had to set up mail from scratch. I'm still not very impressed with Apple, a known and big problem and one of the world's most profitable companies can't solve it after a couple of months. I haven't opened Aperture yet as I felt I should just say thanks to all who made suggestions before I jump in.

--
Bodensee

As a total Apple and Aperture phanboi, let me be the first to say that that is a totally Windoze drill - exactly the sort of pain we use Macs to avoid.

Deepest sympathies and best wishes!
--
DiploStrat ;-)

I agree completely. I love Apple's stuff but, in this case, Adobe LR has then beat by a mile.

Jeff

Jsimmons said:

I agree completely. I love Apple's stuff but, in this case, Adobe LR has then beat by a mile.

Click to expand...

ONLY if you are one of the MINORITY, like Gerry, who is having problems with Aperture. For the rest of us, Aperture blows the doors off of Lightroom with full screen editing, non-modal workflow, more powerful database options, soft proofing, etc. And did I mention speed?

All of that said, if you like Lightroom, use it. It still outsells Aperture. (Just like PC's outsell Macs.) (Sorry, that was naughty. ;-) )
--
DiploStrat ;-)

I thought you might all like to know that as soon as I tried to open AP3 it crashed, time and time again. I tried the removal of the ID in App Support, that didn't work. So I reinstalled it, put in the codes NINE times during the drill, why don't they make them easy, and finally it opened. 11 hours in total to go back to where I started, albeit one step back inOS. So far it does seem better but really this not what I expect from Apple. If anyone from Apple is reading this - REPORT BACK AND TELL TO GET THEIR ACT TOGETHER.
--
Bodensee

the LR3 beta, uninstall Aperture and ebay it.

As for the comments about only a few people having problems with Aperture, it's likely more like many, many people.

Seriously, Aperture would not run on my brand new iMac. It was the first and only large app I installed and it just would not run.

Of course over the last year I've installed, PSE with Bridge, the various LR betas and trials and have not had a single issue with any of these apps and I have yet to delete plists, repair permissions, zero drives or reinstall anything.

I use updates from Software update and have never had an issue. It's not my computer it's Aperture, it's just plain bug ridden software that for some reason is incompatible with many, many Apple computers even identical models.

Aperture is a cr@p shoot and the bottom line is, if the trial doesn't work then the licensed version won't either. So don't waste your money, which is advice too late for you.

Gene

bodensee said:

I'm still not very impressed with Apple, a known and big problem and one of the world's most profitable companies can't solve it after a couple of months. I haven't opened Aperture yet as I felt I should just say thanks to all who made suggestions before I jump in.

Click to expand...

Yeah. I'm feeling with you. Having Apple sitting on 41 billion $ cash and calling other companies "lazy" (Adobe) doesn't feel right when you work a bit with Aperture.

It really only needs a 3.1 version to be good. But I guess we wait 'till 2012 for another half baked 4.0...

Najinsky said:

Try booting your Mac with the 64bit kernel (hold down 6 and 4 while booting). Run Aperture in 64 bit mode, Does it make a difference.

Click to expand...

Booting in 64-bit mode will do nothing with respect to running applications. The mode that the kernel runs in has little to do with the mode that the applications run. Worse, if the user needs hardware drivers (kernel extensions) that are currently only available in 32-bit mode his system will run in a degraded mode at best. There is little advantage to running a 64-bit kernel at this time. For best results use the default kernel mode.

To the original posters issues... Aperture 3 uses lots of memory. You may find that with a 2 GB system OS X slows way down as it has to swap memory to and from disk. The Aperture updates helped in this respect. I still bumped my machine up to 4 GB.

Where does one find the firmware updates?

fenomeno said:

I notice that the firmware update is back up, Apple had pulled it for a few days. If you downgrade back to 10.6.2 via reinstalling 10.6 and then a combo update, you will find Aperture runs much better.

Click to expand...

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL978

Read this carefully. You can only install if you are using an NVIDIA 7300/7600GT card. The update specifies it is for Windows 7 users running in Boot Camp. I am NOT running Windows 7 OR Boot Camp. But I installed anyway. It improved Snow Leopard performance considerably. That is, until 10.6.3.. Therefore, DO NOT update to 10.6.3.. If you call Apple, they will tell you the same thing, remain at 10.6.2.. If you are already 10.6.3, then reinstall SL using a Retail DVD and upgrade to 10.6.2 manually by downloading the 10.6.2 Combo update via Apple's Support pages.

Make sure you have a back up of all data and photos before attempting, just in case....

fenomeno I should have followed your instructions from the start. I went through the trouble of taking my machine to the genius bar only to have to lug it back home on the subway and going through the erase and install process. I then upgraded to 10.6.2. I am very thankful to Time Machine which made the whole process pretty easy. I haven't updated the firmware yet.

I spoke too soon :-( The problem is still there except that being for every raw file it's now maybe two out of ten images. Regenerating previews and reprocessing masters makes no difference.

If you are running Aperture 3, go to the Library/Aperture folder and remove the RawDecodePresets.plist file. THis is remnant of Aperture 2.

Also, the graphic firmware update mentioned previously will help making adjustments in 10.6.2

sorry, wrong path, delete this if running Aperture 3:
Library/ApplicationSuport/Aperture RawDecodePreset.plist