Apple has been known to keep at least a few top drawer shooters in the loop when bringing products to market. As I recall, they had input and examples ready to share by the likes of Chase Jarvis, Bill Frakes and Joe McNally … on the day Aperture 3 was released. So there is a track record in that respect. Those packages that were presented were not created overnight. Those guys had more than a few days to work with Aperture 3 and likely offered valuable input that helped guide and shape development.  Just wish I was on that list. ;-) If Apple is including working pros in this process … they are very likely not going to conduct a public search for participants.

We really have to get off this total speculation kick and analyzing every move Apple is making and what the Photos app will be.

First … Photos v1 is NOT going to be everything we all hoped the next iteration of Aperture would be. Quite likely, it won’t be an equivalent replacement for what Aperture can do now.

Secondly … don’t underestimate these lowly “retail employees” … many of us who have been full time (and part time) working pros had to work elsewhere to pay the bills until we could strike out on our own. We all had to start out somewhere. I doubt Apple is going to leverage everything they hope to accomplish with Photos purely on the expectations of novice iPhone photographers. They will likely try to get the widest spectrum possible for input and direction.

Thirdly … To me, the most important factor of this whole new offering from Apple is not what it’s going to be in early 2015 … but what is it going to make possible down the road beyond that date. We must also keep in mind that this industry is constantly evolving. I’m doing much more in video work than I had ever anticipated. It’s very likely our reliance on still photography image processing will be much less in future years than it is today. More change may be coming sooner than we think as markets change and we adapt to serve them.

I have a feeling this next step in image processing evolution is gearing up to set the industry on it’s ear and open up some tremendous possibilities that were once only imagined just s short time ago. This project is only the infancy of what is to mature and unfold. I wager, that evolution will be brisk, breathtaking and well worth the wait.

As a former Apple employee (Silicon Engineering Group) I can tell you that many Apple employees are very accomplished photographers, and many of them are in the retail division as well as in engineering.