Apple's Aperture is looking shaky: locked threads and deleted postings in their discussion forums

Apple has always reserved the right to lock or delete discussions in their support forums that they dislike. In general they're reasonably tolerant -- sort of like the Chinese government. When they've got a real problem, however, they tend to lock things down.

They're now deleting and locking quite a few comments about Aperture:

Apple - Support - Discussions - Why are threads locked? ...

Nope, they lock out anyone who has anything negative to say. It's their website so they're entitled, but it's hilarious that they're so easily offended. After all, we're just pointing out what's wrong with their software. THEY are the ones who screwed people out of $500 or E500 for something that says 'Designed for professional photographers' right on the front of the box.

It's not even CLOSE to meeting that goal! And I'd point to my previous threads on the subject, which are quite detailed, but they've been deleted because the truth might hurt sales.

Unfortunately for Apple, there will be a large number of websites and magazines with INDEPENDENT reviews which aren't bought & paid for. Once those come out, Aperture sales will plummet.

Now that Apple has an RSS feed, and that feed is cached by Bloglines, I get to see and read all the comments that get deleted.

It's a marker of Apple's sensitivity on the topic that they appear to have deleted an innocent posting of mine, in which I asked if Aperture imported both Edited and Original images from iPhoto, or just Edited images. My hunch is that it imports only the Edited images, so anyone transferring their library from iPhoto to Aperture will, if they delete their iPhoto library, have unwittingly lost all of their originals. IF I'm right people will not be happy. I've asked the question again in a standalone post, if Apple deletes that one I'll know I've really hit a nerve. [Update 12/4: It wasn't deleted. Those who've tried report the Original and Edited are both imported, and are represented as a 'stack'. Good Aperture news for a change!]

I know better than to buy 1.0 products from Apple, but a lot of MacOS X users have been desperate to escape from iPhoto and they've moved faster than they should have. Other early adopters are relatively new to Apple, and haven't realized that software QA is not a priority at Apple. (Innovation is a priority, reliability is not a priority.)

Update 12/4: Derrick Storey reports life with Aperture on a G4 laptop isn't bad.