Yours Truly on Photos for Mac Back in June

From the DF archive, back in June:

One of the things I heard at WWDC is that the new Photos app for Mac was started under the name “iPhoto X”. I think they abandoned that name because it carried too much baggage. The whole situation had gotten too complicated. iPhoto for iOS was ambitious but ultimately a failure — too complicated, too fiddly.

Post-WWDC, the way I hope Photos for Mac plays out is not that Apple offers a “pro” upgrade, but rather that extensions allow for third-party developers to improve image editing in Photos for Mac in a similar way to how they will for Photos on iOS. Photos for Mac will likely never be a true professional tool like Aperture was or Lightroom is, but it could be much, much more than a simple library. It could — and should — be something that works well for serious enthusiasts (a.k.a. “prosumers”) in a way that iPhoto never did.

No third-party editing extensions yet, but given that they exist for iOS, they’re inevitable for Photos for Mac. As for Photos for Mac starting life as “iPhoto X”, the ever-intrepid Steven Troughton-Smith found this while spelunking through the developer beta today.

★ Thursday, 5 February 2015