Using Aperture on more recent Mac computers and OS, and migrating to Lightroom

This is not actually a question, it is more of a comment to assist others who find themselves regretting the loss of Aperture.

First off, I am successfully running Aperture on an Intel iMac with Big Sur installed because I downloaded an application called Retroactive and installed that. Aperture will run if Retroactive is activated but at first use there was something you had to do twice to enable it to work, but I can't for the life of me remember what that was.

Retroactive does not work on M1 or M2 chips, only computers with Intels.

Second, before I found Retroactive I was looking at migrating my 3.5 TB of Aperture libraries to Lightroom but the usual migration route left around one-third of my images behind. Then I found Aperture Exporter, an excellent little Canadian app which only costs 19 Canadian $ at the time. It took a little bit of learning but once I knew what I was doing I was able to export each of my projects as a separate library including metadata, and then import them into Lightroom.

I know I will eventually have to accept that Aperture is dead but it is useful to still be able to run it on Big Sur while I gradually wean myself on Lightroom.

I hope this helps folks who find themselves in the same boat as I did though I cannot help wishing Apple has sold Aperture to a third party company prepared to keep updating it even if it meant an annual subscription or something like that.