Wasn’t that the basis of Apple’s “Get a Mac” campaign though?
Right - you have to have a better product, but Lightroom isn’t Photoshop (i.e. it isn’t impossible to compete with) and Aperture’s codebase already exists. Apple could divert the profits from a single day’s worth of iPhone sales into an endowment for Aperture to keep a halo-effect on their Mac hardware.
In my limited experience, products whose main differentiating factor is being "not the other guy" usually generate a ton of hype, but end up flopping.