First, I would like to correct myself. Contrary to what I said in my initial post, it is possible to buy a digital version of the app. You just need to download the demo and on the opening screen, just click on the buy button and it will lead you to a store page where you can either buy a digital version of the app (basically, just a serial number) or order the standard DVD box. But before doing so, I think you should read the whole post…
Note: watch update at the bottom of the post…
Setup
Once the app is registered, I started the long and boring picture update process. Let me tell you one thing: this is long! Took the whole night to update the metadata and the pictures so they could be compatible with the brush tool in A3.
Actually, when I came back to the computer this morning, the process was halted at 96% (!) because of a lack of memory. Using iStat Menu I noticed that the swap file was around 66gig. I wish I could have taken a screenshot but the computer was so slow that I just force-quit everything, including Aperture 3 and prayed no files would be corrupted.
Even after the conversion was completed, you have to let Aperture alone for a few more hours so it can generate all the required thumbnails in the background (& face & places), else you will be stuck with a very sluggish application.
I left the computer in the morning to do its thing and came back 8 hours later to see that it was frozen again. Restarted the machine and the activity windows shows that it only did a fraction of the job so it will have to process for a few more hours (as in 10+ hours at the rate it is going right now). Actually, the process has been running for a few minutes now and it is back at a 12 gig swap file… WTF?
After a quick search on the Apple forum to see if I was the only person having issues with Aperture 3, I found this thread. No solution so far, just wait and pray. Even then, from the people who have passed the wait, it seems like the application is slower than Aperture 2.
My advice so far is to stay away from Aperture 3 until these issues have been resolved.
About to leave the computer processing until next morning, lets see what happen…
UPDATE:
I am now following Fred strategy to just import the old library into a blank one and it seems to work so far. Aperture physical and virtual memory is in control and no slow downs. I recommend you to do the same and wait for an update before using Faces.
UPDATE2:
Came back from work. Computer was frozen again but, once rebooted, everything was fine and A3 was using a reasonable amount of memory (1,5gig and no swap file). The app is responsive and I am now testing some of its feature. I will report back on my experience in a few days.
Comments
How big is your library, and how many photos are in it?
That’s the sort of information you HAVE to include before you completely trash a product.
Conversion went flawlessly for me. !50,000 images on a 2007 Mac Pro.
over 20k pictures and 177gig. It is big, but nothing spectacular compared to others.
Before posting this, I double checked everything, including making sure I wasnt alone with this issue. If you look at the thread on Apple.com, you will see that we are a lot with the identical issue. So far, I have restarted the conversion 6 times. My next step is to trash everything and retry with the original library and NOT upgrade old pictures to the new A3 version.
interestingly enough, i too JUMPED on Aperture 3 IMMIDIATELY!
on my MBP 2009 unibody 4GB ram a small portable library of about 8GB of photographes and 200GB of referenced 5D mark II video files of varying sizes.
took nearly no time because instead of UPGRADING i installed the TRIAL and IMPORTED my library not UPGRADED.
performance is SUPER fast much improved over 2.0.
now the interesting part,
i left my machine at home (my main work machine and repository for Aperture)
did an UPGRADE on this one, not an IMPORT a 64gb library (200gb of externally referenced images) So far 7.5 hrs & counting for the UPGRADE
i’m heading home now, but after screensharing to see the results of a day’s worth of upgradding i came across your blog post and im so worried !!
i’ll post results of that one later.
martin
of course luckily i have an extremely stringant backup workflow 
both MBP and iMac are cloned to seperate external FW drives nightly so i’m only a day away but still. annoying and somehow i remember a familiar situation with Aperture 2.0 upgrade from 1.0. could be mistaken tho…
I’ve installed Aperture 3 and migrated all my libraries with no problem. 150K pictures.
My process :
1) verified that I’ve got no broken link on my A2 library.
2) disabled face recognition
3) Imported A2 libraries (not upgraded) into a new Aperture 3 library.
I didn’t migrate all my photos to the new engine. I will do it if necessary one by one depending on my needs.
Works flawlessly so far, and is much much faster than A2.
Fred – my 0.02
So, the solution is to IMPORT and NOT UPGRADE the library?
Right now I’m using the trial version on a 4-year-old Intel iMac (soon to be augmented with a new MP or MBP) and will purchase the license after an update is released. I haven’t checked out its photo capabilities yet but am very impressed with its performance using video-much improved over file organizing in the Finder.
Anyone have suggestions with Aperture video library/Final Cut Pro workflow?
Yes Robert. import, don’t upgrade. So you will be sure to not keep on using a previously corrupted library.
For Aperture to FCP workflow, I think I will use Aperture for mainly finished products out of FCP & Color.
This is a great new Aperture feature but I don’t see the need to keep always online all the footage, scenes, takes, etc… I used into FCP to create a specific movie.
But some may see it differently depending of your needs.
Actually, i’ve always been exactly the opposite so maybe this is finally my solution!
Being the kind of Videographer that i am (that is, someone who goes out on video excursions like one would go on a photo walk, i tend to have alot more “random video footage” more akin to stock clips than actual movie projects…
so for me, i actually WELCOME using Aperture as a management tool. before i was using iVideo as the closest thing to Aperture for video files since FCP only allows you to really manage per project, not as a gallery of footage (not very well atleast)
so now i can treat my video clips as LABELED, RATED, Smart Folder, keep them in the same Aperture folder as my photography and still have a smart view for just viewing video.
its actually the best thing in the world right now
and as for IMPORT don’t UPGRADE i think that’s really only in regards to
1> if you have a decent sized library (mobile libraries on laptops seem to be ok in terms of size and time to upgrade)
2> if you don’t want to wait what is now going on 48hrs of OVERALL “upgrade/convert/face detection” on a massive “main library” on a desktop iMac 2009 3.0ghz
those are my thoughts, from my personal workflow.
Read update2: everything is working fine since I did the import strategy. I will wait a bit before doing the Faces ID tho.
I just spent the last few days testing Ap3 and I can’t convey how disappointed I am.
Sigh, stuck with Lr for another 2 years…
It’s weird, I have about 105GB of photo library and I upgraded my library. It took me less then one hour to finish the process!
I did have a problem with it though. I didn’t buy the software, I only bought the upgrade. After installation, Aperture 3 would crash on start up every time. Some people said starting Aperture 3 in 32bit mode would solve the problem. But I fixed it in a different way, I removed the system ID from library/application support/… and just enter my Aperture 2 serial number and then the upgrade serial number and the problem is solved. Runs at 64 bit
Some people on other sites are having difficulty when it comes to running plug-ins with Aperture 3. For now, you must run Aperture in 32-bit mode in order to access plug-ins. The problem is that many are not able to see the 32-bit check box in Get Info. which will correct the issue. If you boot in Safe Mode and then restart normally, the check box becomes visible.
It’s now April, I bought A3 after only glancing through a couple of reviews. Had all sorts of Drive space issues (not allowing update to complete, even after clearing twice the size of the aperture library). I eventually noticed the blogs, etc I was reading were around a month old so I ran Software Update & there was a stack of Aperture updates…installed, reopened A3 & all sweet. ( note I could also revert to the A2 version from Time machine back up)
Unfortunately was not advised to update by Apple store staff – they will get a serve from me next time I visit as I wasted several hours trying to fix the problem.
My Advice is if you are installing A3 ( from Disc) make sure you have back up ,and run software update before opening the program for first time.
I haven’t had nearly this much trouble with A3 and I’m running on a plain ol’ Macbook. Perhaps the most recent update helped because I didn’t get Aperture 3 right away – I waited until Apple released a couple of updates.
RAW files slow me down quite a bit though.
