I'm surprised only one mention of Media Pro (via its former names), and no mention of Aperture. Anyone using Media Pro? Looks like a solid product, but I'm skeptical of any product that has changed ownership twice. It appears the new owners have integrated parts of it (but not all) into Capture One - splitting the code base into two. I have no idea if any of the original developers are still with the product. I know that initially, many of the core team moved to Redmond when Microsoft bought the product. But that was a long time ago.
I'm not a PM user, but I do use Expression Media (Media Pro's immediate predecessor) on a Mac (OS 10.6.8 Snow Leopard). I've been using the software for almost 10 years (since it was iView). I use Nikon Capture NX2 as my editor. I haven't seriously considered buying Media Pro because I simply don't have a need for it (my collection is still small enough to not push Expression Media's catalog size limits). I did try Media Pro briefly just to see how it looked and didn't like the UI changes (white text on a dark gray/black background to keep up with the Joneses). And while it seemed stable in my very limited test, there continue to be many reports of instability on the Phase One forum (after over two years in Phase One's hands), so my expectations for Media Pro have been dampened. Phase One probably bit off more than they could chew when they bought EM. And in fact the company has told me that their editor Capture One has priority over Media Pro in terms of development effort. I've always suspected that Phase One wanted the iView/EM catalog code simply so they could make Capture One more like Lightroom, and that they would eventually abandon EM/Media Pro as a stand alone DAM program. Phase One tells me this is not true, but it's unlikely they would admit it if it were true (to avoid losing sales).
I have tried Lightroom and Aperture and found they didn't offer anything that I couldn't already do better in EM and NX2. Photo Supreme (IDImager for the Mac) looks interesting but I'm waiting to hear what others say about it. I've invested so much time into building my iView/Expression Media catalog (HTML gallery templates, catalog sets, hierarchical keywords, etc.) that I am loathe to switch DAMs. But ever since EM stopped displaying edited NEF previews (since Mac OS 10.5), I've been looking for an alternative program, and when I learned PM supports NEF previews and that Camera Bits was going to add a catalog to PM, my interest was very piqued.
So I'm waiting to see which event happens first: a more stable Media Pro or a PM catalog. But it isn't certain either will happen, so for now I plan to use Expression Media until I'm forced to stop, i.e., if my computer dies and if EM won't run on Mavericks (or whatever Mac OS is current at the time). But even then I'll probably try to figure out a way to keep my Snow Leopard Mac alive just so I can run EM.
Note: you can still buy Expression Media from Phase One. A trial version is on their
Microsoft Expression Media archive page. Presumably it costs the same as Media Pro, but I don't know.
