I finally broke down and gave Adobe Lightroom a try. The verdict? It’s better than “Bridge + ACR”, but it’s still got some UI issues it needs to address to compete with Apple’s Aperture. However, it does have a few more controls that I liked to really fine tune each image and tweak it until I like it. And the RAW conversion seems to be much smoother and of better quality than Aperture as did Aperture.
So I guess I am ditching Aperture for now and going for Lightroom as much as I despise its badly copied Aperture UI. Finally, I’ve found my workflow! Hurray!