Canon5Dtips Photography is more than words.
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.
