Just because Apple’s pulling Aperture from the Mac App Store doesn’t mean you have to pull it from your workflow.

Apple sent out an email to Aperture owners this week reminding them that as soon as Photos for OS X goes into general distribution, Aperture will no longer be available for purchase from the Mac App Store. The usual gnashing of teeth and tearing of hair erupted soon afterwards. I have just one thing to ask people who are complaining about this: Why are you so anxious to get rid of Aperture?

Look, Aperture is end of life, we all know that. Apple said that last June at WWDC, and the email they sent out this week says that they won’t be selling new copies either. But read what Apple said carefully:

When Photos for OS X launches this spring, Aperture will no longer be available for purchase from the Mac App Store. You can continue to use Aperture on OS X Yosemite, but you will not be able to buy additional copies of the app. [The emphasis is mine.]

So you can’t buy new copies of Aperture. What won’t change, however, is that you can still download Aperture if you already own it. I’ve checked with Apple and they confirmed this for me. So if you’re already using Aperture, you can continue to download and use it.

Apple introduced Aperture late in 2005, providing professional photographers with a professionally-priced photography cataloging tool that provided functions like raw image support, non-destructive editing and other capabilities. Apple improved it over time and lowered the price, eventually migrating Aperture to the Mac App Store, opening the software to be used by many other Mac users whose needs exceeded what iPhoto could do.

Some of us have been using Aperture for a decade, since before there were Intel-based Macs. Some of us have invested hundreds, if not thousands, of hours in Aperture workflows to make our photos look great and to better organize large volumes of photos that we’ve shot, imported and scanned into our Macs.

Obviously Apple hasn’t committed to keeping Aperture alive indefinitely. If Apple discontinues APIs in future versions of OS X that are necessary for Aperture to work, Aperture will die. It’s wise to plan for the future by developing a workflow that’s not Aperture-dependent.

But that future isn’t today, or even tomorrow. If you’re going to be using Yosemite for a while, you can count on Aperture to continue to work. Even when Photos for OS X is out in the world, you’ll be able to continue using Aperture to your heart’s content.

I’ve been working with Photos since the first beta version of 10.10.3 was released, and I find it to be a mostly adequate replacement for iPhoto, with considerably more robust and fast iCloud integration, which is nice. But Photos isn’t a replacement for Aperture.

The way I use Photos is for general-purpose importing from DSLRs and my iPhone. Everything I shoot gets dumped in there. I like to use Aperture to catalog and tweak the product photos I shoot for iMore, so I use Photo’s share sheet to export to Aperture. The photos are copied to Aperture’s own, separate database, where I can manipulate them as I see fit.

The rest of the photography software business hasn’t stood still, of course. Adobe’s Lightroom is a popular alternative for photographers, made even more enticing to Aperture users when Adobe said it would double down on Lightroom in light of Apple’s announcement.

So if you’re using Aperture today, you can continue using Aperture even after Photos makes its debut. Sure, go ahead and plan for the future, figure out the best tool for what you need to do. But stop acting like someone from Apple is going to show up at your house and tear Aperture from your Mac with their bare hands the moment Photos for OS X is released. It’s not happening.

Microsoft is once again asking for feedback from the public on how to improve one of its products or services. This week, it launched the Bing Listens UserVoice forum to get input on how the company might improve its search service.

Verizon Wireless has announced that pre-order for Samsung’s latest flagship devices will begin on April 1, 2015.

While the pre-orders for the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge will begin on April 1, there’s no word yet on an exact release date on Verizon. Both devices were announced earlier this week during MWC 2015.

Developer Blizzard will release the next single player expansion for their popular card collecting game next month for Android tablets.

Developer Blizzard will release the next single player expansion for their popular card collecting game next month for the iPad.

Blizzard plans to launch real money pre-orders for Blackrock Mountain on March 19 and will throw in an exclusive card for those folks. Here’s what players can expect from this Hearthstone expansion:

The Blackrock Mountain Adventure thrusts Hearthstone players into the middle of a war between powerful forces battling for control of the mountain. There, duelists will encounter fierce minions, including Dark Iron dwarves, fire elementals, and dragons, before facing off against iconic menaces from the Warcraft® universe, such as Ragnaros, the Firelord. Card-slingers who take down these villains will reap a mighty reward—31 scorching new cards inspired by the legendary mountain and its denizens, bringing a wealth of new tactical options to the ever-evolving Hearthstone metagame.

Blackrock Mountain will open up one wing per week over the course of a month. As with the game’s first Adventure, Curse of Naxxramas, it will be accessible for either 700 in-game gold per wing or $6.99 per wing , with the entire Adventure purchasable for $24.99. Further details, including specific launch timing, will be announced in the weeks ahead.

In addition, GameSpot reports from PAX East that Blizzard plans to expand Hearthstone to the iPhone sometime in the coming months.

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Source: Blizzard

Week Weather for iPhone is a new app that lets you view your current and upcoming weather quickly. The app provides an information-rich, yet easy-to-read outlook on a week’s worth of weather.

Week Weather presents forecast information to you through a graphical layout, rather than just through text like many other weather apps. Color-coded boxes will give you the temperature, as well as the conditions of any given period of time. The size of a box is determined by how long its conditions are expected to hold. Tap a box to get more detailed information.

Week Weather provides a general forecast, as well as more detailed outlooks. There are sections for temperature, clouds, precipitation, wind, and humidity. Tap the pin in the top right corner of the screen to enter new locations, and the gear in the top left to change your units of temperature or to switch between colorful and light color schemes.

Week Weather is available now from the App Store.

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The Nextgen Reader RSS feed app for Windows Phone got updated today with a few new features and bug fixes, but the app is also on sale for the next three days. You can grab it for just $2.49, compared to its usual $2.99 price tag.

Serena, starring Jennifer Lawrence, is available to rent in the iTunes Store today, a full three weeks before it will be released in theaters. A rental of the film will run you $9.99 in both HD and SD.

The movie, set in North Carolina during the 1930s Depression, also stars Lawrence’s Silver Linings Playbook co-star Bradley Cooper, and is set be released in US theaters on a limited basis on March 27 (it has already been released in theaters across Europe). Here’s the description from the iTunes Store listing:

George and Serena Pemberton (Oscar nominee Bradley Cooper and Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence) are love-struck newlyweds building a business empire. Serena proves herself to be equal to any man: overseeing loggers, hunting rattle-snakes, even saving a man’s life in the wilderness. With power and influence now in their hands, the Pembertons refuse to let anyone stand in the way of their inflated love and ambitions. But their passionate whirlwind romance is threatened by demons from their pasts, forcing the couple to reckon with blackmail, jealousy and murder in this ravishing period film directed by Oscar winner Susanne Bier.

Fan of Lawrence’s work? You can rent Serena now from the iTunes Store.

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