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Apple is looking to employees to test its new Photos app

PhotosPreviewforosx

We’ve mentioned in a previous post that Apple plans to replace the once venerated pro-level photo management app, Aperture, and presumably iPhoto as well, with an all new application called simply Photos. Now Apple is looking for someone to put it through its paces, and looking no further than its own collective of employees.

They are looking for current retail employees that have a passion for photography and are willing to relocate to Apple’s campus in Cupertino. The message that went out to employees;

“We are seeking a technical and passionate photography enthusiast to join our Quality Assurance team working on Photos for OS X. You will be part of a fast moving team of specialists tasked with delivering the next generation of photography tools for Apple.

This type of offer has been made by Apple before and falls under its “career experience” program. As 9to5Mac explains, “Apple typically offers career experience programs for retail employees that have worked at Apple for at least one year. These opportunities allow employees to try out various positions within Apple Corporate, typically ranging from marketing and engineering on existing products.”. 

There are still a lot of questions about the Photos app, in particular whether it will be released with at least some professional level features. An Ars Technica post cites an Apple representative stating that Apple has “plans” for Photos to include image search, editing, effects, and even third-party extensibility. The latter feature, if true, might be the key to Photos success. If Apple provides a framework for developers to add their own features to Photos, it may be possible for those seeking Aperture-like functionality to build their own pro-level application. That might be asking a lot from Apple, but it would leave them to focus on the “average consumer” features that Apple keeps dumbing their software to, while opening up the possibilities of a customizable pro-sumer app. I for one, would be really interested in this concept. For me, iPhotos features are a bit too rudimentary, to the point that iPhoto has become the digital equivalent of a cardboard box full of photos. Aperture, on the other hand, has a lot of great tools and features for going through and organizing your photos, but there is much in the program I don’t utilize. Being able to pick and choose from a set of plug-in features would be great.

In the end, we’ll just have to wait until 2015 to find out what is really going on, and plug along, caught between the clunky iPhoto and the withering Aperture. I will keep my fingers crossed that Photos will be as great as Apple says it will be.

What features do you really want to see in Photos? Let us know in the comments or on the Facebook page.

 

 

3 replies on “Apple is looking to employees to test its new Photos app”

It’s common for Apple to start with inside testing before releasing any kind of beta to the public, however there is no guarantee any outside users will see Photos before it’s released. Given this is a pretty major change, replacing both iPhoto AND Aperture, we can hope that Apple extends their Beta Seed program for consumers. Also, Apple generally does seek out select groups of professionals to privately test their products, so it won’t just be Apple employees providing feedback.

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