After making every user worry about it's commitment to the program, Apple finally released Aperture 2.0. Quite desperate for improvements, I immediately downloaded the demo, then purchased a serial number and after a few days of playing around, migrated my 100,000 pictures library to it. It's not bad at all.

1) the weirdest change is how the interface has been streamlined to the point it gets completely out of your way. It makes the software look much less powerful when in fact it is probably twice better than version 1.5. As a result, you can spend your whole time in the full screen mode having your picture, as it should, taking centerstage.

2) it is seriously faster. Maybe not as fast as the competition leaders, but certainly fast enough so it isn't really an issue, even on older hardware. Of course, you have to be reasonable and wait until all background tasks have been done (or paused them, you can...) if you want the best responsiveness.

3) the image quality of the RAW converter has been seriously improved, the reason why it took so long to provide support for new cameras.

4) a few welcome enhancements have been added, some pinched shamelessly from Lightroom, like Vibrancy and Recovery sliders.

5) Apple showed it is interested in the product and improving it. Plus, it is cheaper than it was so maybe it will make Lightroom cheaper as well: everybody is happy.

It is pretty good, and it even works just fine on my MacBook, but, much as I vastly prefer the UI paradigm over Lightroom, it isn't giving me enough reasons to switch, especially as Aperture 2 really only seems to come up to the level of LR 1.3, in the round.

And since Apple has swallowed it's pride enough to copy vibrancy (world+dog has got "clarity"), it is a pity they couldn't go the whole way and give us curves, too.

Supposedly the quarter-tone controls offer the curves functionality, see this tutorial:

http://apertureprofessional.com/showthread.php?t=12060

With the new version of Aperture will it read the new Nikon D300 Raw files? Will it require moving up from OS 10.4.xxx, just to run Aperture or as importantly read Nikon D300 Raw files?????

Aperture 2.0 works with N300 RAW files. It also supports the D3, and Canon's 1Ds Mark III.

It requires 10.4.11 or 10.5.2.

I started with Aperture then also used LR I decided to upgrade to 2.0 and now like it better than LR. I find the conversions of my 5D and M8 files better than LR. The only thing I have to try yet is printing.

Not sure where to post this, but I don't think it warrants a new thread so I'll try here.

Has anyone had trouble in Aperture 2.0.1 with exported images looking soft? I'm specifically talking about images that are scaled down during export (in this case for web viewing). I realize that down-scaling softens images as a byproduct, but to my eyes this seems worse than that.