If not Aperture, then what are you using on your Mac?

Doug,

The small crop from PN looks better to me than Aperture. Maybe I'm not looking at the same details you are. The last image is the PN right? The brighter one (second to last) is AP crop right? When I view these full size the leaf in the AP crop appears to be significantly over processed compared to PN. I can see a lot more noise reduction and edge enhancement applied making it look a bit artificial. But this seems just the opposite of what you noticed so I was wondering if I got the pictures reversed?