Joseph Linaschke, who runs ApertureExpert, has a great take on Apple’s decision to discontinue Aperture and focus on a single Photos app:

Before we can look to the future, let’s look at the past. Aperture itself has been around since 2005; nearly a decade. And of course it started being written well before that, so we are talking about 10+ year old code. The cloud, the iPhone, and pocket sized digital cameras that surpass the quality of film not only didn’t exist, but were barely a twinkle in Steve Jobs’ or any technologist’s eye. Aperture is a photo editing and management tool written for users used to an old school workflow. Go on a shoot. Sit down to edit. Share when you’re done. But that’s not the world we live in anymore. Today we want to shoot, share immediately with a cool effect, edit on an iPad, sit down at your 4k display and get serious, pick up the iPad and show off what you’ve done, mix, repeat. We want our devices, our libraries, our experience integrated and seamless. This simply can not happen with Aperture as it is today.

Also, don’t miss his comment follow-up and analysis of the Photos.app screenshot shared by Apple. In short, Joseph argues, Photos 1.0 may not ship with all the features of Aperture as you know it today, but he is confident that Apple will continue to iterate on the product.