Unable to see photos using Aperture 3.6 Running in OSX 10.14 VM Running on VMWare Fusion 11.5.0 (on OSX 10.14)

[carl_roth]

In an effort to retain my Aperture 3.6 photo edits, I created an OSX 10.14 vm using VMWare 11.5.0 running on OSX 10.14. My plan was to eventually upgrade to OSX 10.15 and then using my OSX 10.14 VM still be able to run Aperture 3.6 which as we know will not be possible on OSX 11.15.  Unfortunately, i can see the photo thumbnails but not the photos themselves. Aperture 3.6 runs fine directly on OSX 10.14 so i am wondering if this is a VMWare Fusion problem?

Carl

[ColoradoMarmot]

OSX guests don't have 3d acceleration, so applications that require it don't run properly.   I suspect Aperture falls into that category.

It's probably time to retire Aperture and move to another solution like Luminar or Lightroom.  There were migration tools for the latter, though it's been so long that I'm not sure they'll still work.

[zpjet]

wow, so glad that my dog search for "run aperture in vmware" took me right here first... I was about to do the OP in a few days, thinking I found a way how to have Catalina and still access my 20k library of family photos...

I did think there's some way to use the acceleration though? I'll try to report when I try the careful install (keeping the 10.14 for a while).

[zpjet]

May I ask how you installed the Aperture? Does it still show in Mac App Store when you're on 10.14? Apologies but I have access to my Catalina laptop only now...

[zpjet]

OK, I found out it's in my Purchases of course. And that it indeed doesn't work due to missing APIs for graphics acceleration which Aperture needs. :smileyangry:

[carl_roth]

I installed Aperture 3.6 by migrating it from my MacBookPro that is still running Mohave.

[carl_roth]

I have already moved to an new app that doesn't require a subscription etc.  I would just like to not loose all the edits from my Aperture library.

It's too bad Apple built a reputation providing apps  like Aperture  and then abandons them to become a cell phone company.

[ColoradoMarmot]

There's no way to do so.  Apple doesn't provide an API like Windows does, and none of the virtualization engines have been able to come up with a viable workaround.

[carl_roth]

Which is a bit silly since i am running the VM on a Mac that has 3d acceleration so you would think that the VM Ware Tools would provide access.

[Technogeezer]

As dlhotka​ says, Apple doesn’t provide the hooks in macOS to allow VMware tools to provide 3D acceleration. Windows has DirectX and Linux typically uses OpenGL to provide 3D acceleration- both of which are fairly well defined so VMware can hook into them.

And before you say “well Apple supports OpenGL so why can’t we get 3D acceleration” , OpenGL is not the system’s native graphics toolkit - it‘s only there to support applications that use it and it’s layered on top of the other macOS technologies. Quartz and Metal are the graphics APIs that are native to the Mac.

[ColoradoMarmot]

Yep.  And OpenGL is an ancient version, and is scheduled for depreciation too.

[ColoradoMarmot]

It's not the host that's the issue, it's the guest.  That's why we have Windows acceleration - Windows provides an API that can be used as a *guest* for 3d.  OSX doesn't.