First up, let’s clear any remaining elephants out of the room: nothing on this website will help you to get past the need for a valid key in order to get {Aperture} to run. All you will find here are a few hints that will hopefully allow you to run the program on ‘underpowered’ machines. You can download a trial version with a 30-day key from {Apple} on the {Aperture} product pages if you’re unsure how slowly the program will work, and use the details here in order to carry out a full evaluation of the software.
Second: you must, must, must properly and fully match the version number of your {Aperture} installation to the pages I provide. Blindly typing in values from a different one will almost certainly fail and possibly leave you with an unusable program. You have been warned !
Finally: as you might expect, nothing here has been approved by {Apple} – all trademarks are theirs and you will have no warranty claims on me or them should you use any of the information on this website.
Enjoy !
installer hacking vs. program hacking
One thing that is important to note is that you do not need to use any sort of hex editor to get the trial to install – you simply need to modify the installer checks (which are far less stringent and written in JavaScript). Once the program is sitting in your Applications directory, you then need to hex edit the binary and also alter the Info.plist requirements checking, and possibly the script ones too.
aperture 2 series
The most recent software.
Aperture 2.1.4
Aperture 2.1.3
Aperture 2.1.2
Aperture 2.1.1
Aperture 2.1
Aperture 2.0.1
Aperture 2
aperture 1.5 series
For historical use only: handy if you have an old installation CD and need to upgrade from scratch.
Aperture 1.5.6
Aperture 1.5.4
Aperture 1.5.3
Aperture 1.5.2
Aperture 1.5.1
Aperture 1.5
aperture 1 series
I didn’t have any hand in the first set of hacks: they were all performed by others to whom I’m deeply indebted as they opened up a whole new way of working with my images. Visit the site I first used for more information and discussion.