Aperture exports jpeg files larger than original RAW files

Can anyone tell me why a RAW file (10.6mb), when exported as a jpeg (10.8mb) from Aperture ends up larger than the original RAW file. The same RAW file when opened and then saved as a jpeg (6.4mb) in Photoshop is a lot smaller. The photo dimensions and resolution are the same in both saved files (34.5mb open file 300dpi 4256 x 2831 pix). I have tried this on several photos, all with similar results. For information I am saving the photos in both Photoshop and Aperture at 300dpi, original size and at a quality setting of 12. In these examples/tests I have done no work to the photos, obviously the file sizes increase after work has been carried out on the photos (in both Ps & Aperture)
Almost doubling the size of saved jpegs has a massive implication on my library and may be one reason to consider Adobe Lightroom as this gives similar jpeg file sizes as Photoshop, i.e. almost half the size of the original RAW file
Reducing the quality setting on saved jpegs is an obvious way to reduce file size, but not answering the question of the considerable discrepancy when saving to the same quality in different software
Is this a feature of Aperture and nothing can be done about it ? I would prefer to use Aperture but cannot cope with the large jpeg sizes !
Any comments would be much appreciated - thank you
Nick

Think you might be right Allen - The 12 quality saved jpegs seem to be pretty high quality, closer to the original than maybe the files saved in Ps at quality 12. I have just run an identical set of processing actions on all the files in Photoshop and the jpegs previously saved in Aperture at 12, 11 and even 8 quality settings seem to be better than the same files saved at 12 in Ps
Bizarrely the file size drops from 10.6mb at quality setting 12 in Aperture, to 3.2mb when saved just one notch down at quality setting 11 in Aperture. That is a massive drop, esp considering the next one down, saving at quality 10 results in a 2.8mb file
rw just ran some checks and tests on the file export settings and file sizes in Aperture, on a file I sent him, and we get the same results. So at least my version of Aperture is not up the wall !!
Would be useful to have the explanations from Apple as to the vast variance in settings and file sizes, but I guess we will just have to keep guessing - and buying more and more hard drives for all the large files
I am considering keeping the RAW originals in future, and I suppose in this case I need only save smaller jpegs, and issue at whatever size they are needed at the time - just needs a bit of planning to look after an ever increasing collection, which is about to have two sets of images added at a time now. Added to the already amassed 80 000 images at last count !)
Thanks
Nick

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