Aperture 3.0.1 - Fix the crashing bugs now Apple!

Question

I'm coming from Aperture 2 and was so excited about the new brushes features that I had to buy version 3 straight away. What a mistake that was!
I can't run this version for more than about 5 mins (while using the new brushes feature) before the application becomes unresponsive or crashes out. At present I can only use the app as an expensive photo browser; no editing.
I've sent off all my automated crash reports and had a lengthy telephone call with the apple tech support, who admit there are issues. They essentially told me to turn off all the new features like faces and the location stuff (which I had done already & hey great I'm almost back to the Aperture 2 feature set). The only additional thing I was told to turn off was maintaining previews, but I still get crashes just the same.
Why was this software released in this state? Better late than harm the company reputation. I have a 1st class degree in micro electronics and have been a full time software developer myself for the past 20 years so I feel I know a fair bit about hardware & the software development cycle.
Version 3.0.1 does appear to stop the mouse pointer freezing & jumping around when using brushes, however I feel that it may be crashing more for me when the app inevitably goes off on one of its never ending "processing..." task cycles. I've captured a few samples of the app in this state using the activity monitor and sent them off to apple support as instructed. So hey do I get a wage for being an Aperture QA/tester? The free Lightroom Beta is better product than this official Apple release.
I've asked for my money back, but since I've opened the box & installed (which you have to do to find out that the software is not fit for purpose) they are not all that responsive to the idea. If the software is unusable even a month after it's first release then I think I have the right to recovering my hard earned cash. What do yo think? The forums are full of people with the exact same problems so I'm certainly not alone.
I fear the constant crashing and resetting is going to corrupt my computer's hard disk, so I am therefore no longer going to use the Aperture product until there is another and more stable release.
Hmm I thought I'd feel a little better after a rant, but nope still frustrated.

Answer 1

My experience has been pretty good so far, but I felt I was lacking performance. I decided to up the game in my Mac Pro and installed a WD Velociraptor as a boot and app drive, and a WD 640 Black RAID-0 (two drives at the moment, a third going in soon) - boy is everything snappy and fast - even Aperture 3 is super-super responsive and quick now - love it.
However, since today, it keeps crashing. Most likely some damaged file as it keeps trying to load my "Greenland" pictures and somehow doesn't manage it. I've got about 10 seconds in which I can see and select other albums or folders, but I can not stop Aperture from processing the "Greenland" images. Does not matter if I run Aperture in 32 or 64bit mode and whether or not I boot into 32 or 64bit. Just now re-installed the 10.6.2 combo too, nothing is better...
It repeatedly crashes, only with this library, but hey, it's my main library and I'd like it to work so I can get rid of images I no longer need. I am so not doing any complete re-install so save those comments
Usually when one thing stops working, it's because something has changed in the system. I did install a USB "keyboard" in the form of a Belkin n55te, which I will now uninstall to see if it makes a difference.
Below's the crashlog if anyone of you techies can point me to something to try - would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks!
J.
PS: Apple must have about 32 of these by now:
Process: Aperture [1097]
Path: /Applications/Aperture.app/Contents/MacOS/Aperture
Identifier: com.apple.Aperture
Version: 3.0.1 (3.0.1)
Build Info: Aperture-1002221847~1
Code Type: X86 (Native)
Parent Process: launchd [536]
Date/Time: 2010-03-10 22:54:42.227 +0100
OS Version: Mac OS X 10.6.2 (10C540)
Report Version: 6
Interval Since Last Report: 434547 sec
Crashes Since Last Report: 33
Per-App Interval Since Last Report: 236551 sec
Per-App Crashes Since Last Report: 29
Anonymous UUID: 1C88A915-DA53-40BC-8845-710A7EB20A08
Exception Type: EXCBADACCESS (SIGBUS)
Exception Codes: KERNPROTECTIONFAILURE at 0x00000000b030cfdc
Crashed Thread: 6
Thread 0: Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread
0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92b89922 semaphorewait_signaltrap + 10
1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92b8f3e6 pthreadmutexlock + 490
2 com.apple.Foundation 0x9616745f -[NSLock lock] + 201
3 com.apple.Aperture 0x00449467 0x1000 + 4490343
4 com.apple.Aperture 0x00448c40 0x1000 + 4488256
5 com.apple.Aperture 0x003c55c0 0x1000 + 3950016
6 com.apple.Aperture 0x003bdce8 0x1000 + 3919080
7 com.apple.Aperture 0x003bddc7 0x1000 + 3919303
8 com.apple.Aperture 0x003c4217 0x1000 + 3944983
9 com.apple.Aperture 0x00414134 0x1000 + 4272436
10 com.apple.Aperture 0x0081324b 0x1000 + 8462923
11 com.apple.Aperture 0x0080e39a 0x1000 + 8442778
12 com.apple.Aperture 0x005b1c8c 0x1000 + 5966988
13 com.apple.Foundation 0x96187ad9 __NSFireDelayedPerform + 537
14 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x97ed1edb __CFRunLoopRun + 8059
15 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x97ecf864 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 452
16 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x97ecf691 CFRunLoopRunInMode + 97
17 com.apple.HIToolbox 0x95ce4f0c RunCurrentEventLoopInMode + 392
18 com.apple.HIToolbox 0x95ce4cc3 ReceiveNextEventCommon + 354
19 com.apple.HIToolbox 0x95ce4b48 BlockUntilNextEventMatchingListInMode + 81
20 com.apple.AppKit 0x94b99ac5 _DPSNextEvent + 847
21 com.apple.AppKit 0x94b99306 -[NSApplication nextEventMatchingMask:untilDate:inMode:dequeue:] + 156
22 com.apple.Aperture 0x00286468 0x1000 + 2643048
23 com.apple.AppKit 0x94b5b49f -[NSApplication run] + 821
24 com.apple.prokit 0x0136dab1 NSProApplicationMain + 326
25 com.apple.Aperture 0x00002fb6 0x1000 + 8118
Thread 1: Dispatch queue: com.apple.libdispatch-manager
0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92bb00ea kevent + 10
1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92bb0804 dispatch_mgrinvoke + 215
2 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92bafcc3 dispatch_queueinvoke + 163
3 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92bafa68 dispatch_workerthread2 + 234
4 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92baf4f1 pthreadwqthread + 390
5 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92baf336 start_wqthread + 30