Blast from the past! iWeb and Aperture live (for now) on Apple.com

Macworld

You know, there’s a saying that goes something like, “Once it’s posted on the internet, it lives forever.” Usually, that’s in reference to that cringy social media post you made after pounding several six-packs of White Claw with your buddies. But it also refers to discontinued Apple products that are mostly forgotten.

Maxim Leyzerovich on X posted a link that he found on Apple’s website: https://www.apple.com/welcomescreen/ilife/iweb-3/, which is a page for iWeb ’09, one of Apple’s apps that was part of the discontinued iLife software suite. The link is legitimate–Apple still hosts this old product page on a server somewhere, but you can’t really do much on the page. The Click to Play button opens a window for QuickTime, which has a button that takes you to a QuickTime for Windows download page. The Video Tutorials link takes you to Apple’s Mac product site, and the Hands-on Help link takes you to the Apple Store location finder.

But wait, there’s more! Kaylemate posted on X this link: https://www.apple.com/welcomescreen/aperture3/, which opens a website for Aperture 3. Like the iWeb ’09 website, the links on the Aperture 3 site don’t really work.




Apple

iWeb, iLife, and Aperture were discontinued long ago, but they’ve never really been forgotten by longtime Mac users–and Apple as well, it seems. But you can count on these websites coming down sooner than later, especially now that we’re calling attention to them. Apple doesn’t like to dwell on the past.

If you’re wondering how a gigantic corporation could let something like this happen, well, don’t be too surprised. As anyone who’s tried to build a website (personal or corporate) will tell you, it’s easy to overlook a few files on your web host. Maybe a backup restoration was involved, and these old files were part of that. However it happened, it happened. Enjoy the nostalgia while it lasts.