I’m running Aperture 1.5.x, which is one version out of date; 2.x is the current version and a $99 upgrade from 1.5. I rarely use Aperture any more, so there’s no reason for me to spend $99 to upgrade (especially when 3.0 is surely due out soon, so even if I do have a need for Aperture in the future, I’ll be buying 3.0 rather than 2.0, which is near the end of its life cycle).

Let me say at this point that breaking backwards compatibility should be punishable by death. This “you must upgrade or we will kick you in the teeth” crap has to stop. Old software works, and companies should not break it on purpose just to make more money. Snow Leopard should support Aperture 1.5 – I only bought it two years ago, for crying out loud. It’s not as if I’m trying to resurrect some dinosaur that would require emulation or anything.

I finally figured out this solution:

1. Download the trial version of Aperture. This will require you to register with Apple.
2. Open Aperture. It will force you to create a trial library; you can’t open your existing libraries.
3. In Finder, find your existing libraries, right-click, and select “Open Package.”
4. Drag each of your projects from Finder into the navigation pane (left sidebar) of Aperture. This will import the photos.
5. Highlight all of the photos in a project, and export them to a folder.

If you use a systematic naming format (e.g. date-time.jpg), you can sort by size, then delete any thumbnails – they will be obvious because they’ll have the exact same EXIF timestamp, so they’ll have a (1) or (2) in the filename.

I wish Apple had thought more about this before deciding not to support Aperture 1.5 in Snow Leopard, because everyone who will encounter this problem is either a casual user or someone who used to use Aperture but switched to another product. Forced obsolescence is not a great way to get your customers back or get them to upgrade.