'Aperture X' Scheduled for Launch Before End of Year?

Hardmac reports that Apple is preparing to launch an updated version of Aperture, branded as "Aperture X", at some point in the relatively near future. The company is reportedly shooting for a release by the end of November, although it may slip into December.

According to our sources, with Aperture X, Apple decided to align its name with Mac OS X, and should release this new evolution of its Pro-oriented photo editing application at the end of November and fore sure before year's end. We did not receive any additional details about this new version, but it seems that it will be able to benefit from Snow Leopard as well as be more multi-core aware.

Last week, French site MacGeneration discovered [Google translation] an Amazon book listing (since removed) for an "Aperture X" guide scheduled for release in May 2010. Book listings are notorious, however, for including "placeholder" items for future planned but uncompleted books carrying estimated or guessed release dates, and thus have not been reliable indicators of upcoming product releases.

Aperture's primary competitor in the field of photo management and post-production comes from Adobe, which just last week launched an early beta version of its Photoshop Lightroom 3 software package.