On October 23, 2012 Apple held a media event in San Jose, CA where they launched the iPad Mini, the new iPad (4), a new MacBook Pro 13ʺ with Retina Display, a new iMac, a new Mac Mini, and updates to iBooks and iBooks Author.

And in all that, Aperture was everywhere to be seen — and heard! It was on screen for the first MacBook Pro 13ʺ images, talked about for Retina graphics and for disk speed access in the new “Fusion Drive”, and once again included (heavily!) in the new Apple TV ad for the MacBook Pro 13ʺ Retina.

Perhaps more telling, Phil Schiller seemed to make a point of referring to Aperture as a “pro application”. Quote:

“…especially pro applications like our Aperture photo application for pros”

and…

“There’s never been a small notebook that gave pro photographers this kind of technology and capability”.

And other than iTunes and Final Cut Pro X, in the TV ad Aperture is the cornerstone of everything that’s happening… we go from Final Cut Pro X to Aperture to iBooks Author (or is that Pages?… to embed a photo) to iTunes back to Aperture to Mail (to mail a photo) back to Aperture on screen for the finale while the voiceover says “for the pro in all of us”.

ApertureExpert reader Scott Davenport took the time to assemble a little video for me of all the times Aperture was mentioned. Yeah, we’re geeky like that.

So then…

For all of those who keep posting, and asking, and emailing me private messages asking “is Aperture is dead”, or “does Apple care about pros”, or anything of the like, I think this answers your questions.

No we don’t know when the next major Aperture release will be. We just had one (yeah yeah a lot of you don’t call it major, but read my review on why it’s more important than you think) and I’m confident we’ll see another one soon. Probably not this year; I think it’d be out of character to release something like that now, but of course I could be wrong.

If you want to see the whole keynote, it’s on Apple’s site here.