I’ve been reading through some of the Olympics blog posts from Derrick Story and David Schloss, and it strikes me how much the ‘speed’ of an application can be subjective.

Sounds odd, I know, but think about it a bit - say you try using an application that you aren’t familiar with. It doesn’t really matter how fast the application is performing the different tasks, it will probably still ‘feel’ slow due to your having to navigate your way around the application’s design philosophy and navigation. So someone who is throughly familiar with Photoshop will probably feel they are faster than if they try switching to a proper workflow app such as Aperture or LightRoom. Then add in the time needed to actually learn the new application...

Then add in that every user will use different parts of an application, so Bob might always be using the more intensive/slower parts of an app, while Harry just uses the less intensive/better coded/faster parts of an app.
To put it more specifically, if Bob uses the Highlights & Shadows brick or the Definition or Vibrance sliders all the time, and never uses Quick Preview mode, he may complain that Aperture is a slow app, especially if using it on a machine with a wimpy graphics card. Harry then comes along, using Quick Preview and doing metadata editing and editing as in image choices rather than editing as in adjustments, uses the Exposure and Levels bricks rather than S&H and thinks Aperture is fantastically speedy.

Who’s right? Both? Neither? Like I said, application speed can be subjective depending on your uses and your expectations.

A couple of other notes - it’s been interesting keeping an eye on some of the LR2 threads on the various forums, where exactly the same process has been taking place. Different people with near-identical hardware making wildly different claims about the ‘speed’ of LR2 compared to LR1, much like we saw similar threads half a year earlier when Aperture 2 came out.
Also, I think one of the areas where LR wins out over Aperture is that initially it feels more familiar to new users than Aperture, with Aperture’s virtual images, virtual organisation and very particular ways of doing things.

Oh, and the Loupe. The Loupe is undoubtably slow when you’ve piled on the adjustments, especially those old monsters H&S, Definition, Rotation etc. :-(

Ian