This news is slightly bittersweet for me, since I just switched to Adobe Lightroom last week, mainly due to the unbelievably sluggish performance of Aperture with even my modest library of images.

Now, I don’t want to get into the usual debate over whether all of Apple’s “features” — of which there were 300 in Leopard and now 100 in just this one program — are really significant enough to be considered as such. At least, I wouldn’t want to if Apple didn’t bill these 100 features as not only new but “dramatic.” The drama must be why they’re charging you $99 to upgrade the program you already paid for, and which was so inadequate they had to release this new version after they got leapfrogged by Adobe. Honestly, a lot of these “features” are things that should have been there in the first place, like variable zoom levels for the loupe or being able to customize keyboard shortcuts. Aperture is now looking like the best choice for RAW management, but I’m not thrilled at having to shell out for Apple’s initial sloppiness.

Press Release [Apple]