Folks, some of us on the HDRI forum are getting into the specifics of RAW and image management (and the future RAW) - well, when Apple came out with Aperture, a streamlined workflow for shooting RAW, I thought it was pretty cool, although the idea of buying a new G5 just to run it was a little iffy. There were careful efforts to differentiate it from Adobe Photoshop, etc. with the rampant speculation about how Aperture and Photoshop would get along on the playground, etc. Apple even noted that Aperture was equipped to launch an external image editor, like Photoshop, to retain the flexibility of Aperture's workflow without compromising the tool set of photographers. Then the initial reviews of Aperture came out and were mixed. I personally have never used it.
Enter Adobe ...
http://labs.macromedia.com/technologies/lightroom/#
Hmmm - I always wondered what Adobe had in store for Macromedia.... Methinks Adobe has responded - and released the beta to the public for "testing" and "feedback". I just downloaded the available beta to see what's up - thought i'd share the love. Very interesting. As long as Adobe keeps forging into the RAW-o-sphere, it would seem that proprietary RAW formats will isolate manufacturers that choose the encrypted, secretive path. But then again, what do I know? 
I have also noticed more and more commercial outfits making their betas available to the public - yea! for open source software that must be, in part, responsible for showing the big guys how to rally a community of devotees around their app. Oh, what will be next? I just installed OpenOffice for OSX last week and thought "how cool is this?" hehehehehehehe!
kirk