Aperture's peculiar selection behavior - primary only

Aperture can't manage iPhoto metadata that I care about, such as comments associated with albums. So I can't use it as my media management solution, but I'm still seeing if I can use it as an image editor.

It's not doing so well.

One of the peculiarities is 'select primary'.

It's easy to set this mode by accident -- an errant touch of the S key will do it. In this mode even if you select multiple images in the UI, one is "primary" (the first selected). Operations apply only to the Primary.

To disable this mode either unselect it in the Edit menu or type S again.

I'm sure it's a useful mode for a serious Aperture user, but it's awfully easy to set it by accident. Of course Aperture is a pro tool, while what I really want is iPhoto Plus (with !$%@ Library Import capabilities).

BTW, there's an obvious bug in Aperture. Switching to Quick Preview mode should place a checkmark in front of that item in the View menu. It doesn't.

Update 3/2/2008: Well, I'm still at a loss. Even when I disable Select Primary mode an adjustment operation is only applied to the Primary image. This could be a bug, or just odd design -- equally probable I'd guess. Aperture has always had quality issues for me. Aperture doesn't have integrated Help functions (another budget cutting move), and the old PDFs aren't even on the Help menu (a last minute delivery bug), so it's a pain to investigate. Despite delivery version 2.0 the product still feels like it's on life support.

Update 3/2/2008: From the awkward PDF only documentation:

You can apply an adjustment or group of adjustments to a range of images by first applying the adjustments to one image and then lifting the adjustments from the first image and stamping them on the other images. You do this by using the Lift and Stamp tools and the Lift & Stamp HUD.

So if you want to get started by applying an auto-adjust function you can't do it in two clicks, you have to use extra clicks. Why?

Update 3/2/2008b: From Apple Discussion.

...If I just copy an adjustment of the auto level from an image to others, i think the copied auto level is only based on the first image...

...That's correct. There's no way to auto-level multiple images at once in Aperture...

In other words, even using the awkward Lift and Stamp operation, you only apply the results of the image-specific auto-level setting to multiple images, you don't auto-level each in turn.

Bizarre.