By shooting RAW with iPhoto, it's a pain in the ass to be honest.
RAW images have no adjustments applied to them, so you have to manually white balance, sharpen, and apply other effects to make a picture look good.
Using iPhoto, the feature set for handling these images is reduced. You cando the above mentioned things, to each and every one of your pictures. But it will take a very long time.
I use Aperture and love it. Lift and stamp is a life saver. You can edit one photo to the way you want it to look, and with a few more clicks, apply it to photos that look similar. The organization into stacks is another great thing, and I love being able to make multiple copies of an image I'm adjusting, and compare them side by side.
Using Aperture, right now I'm running off a 15'' MBP, and a 19'' Dell CRT. Using two monitors is one of the perks about using Aperture. Being able to select and edit pictures on my MBP and see them blown up to full size on the second monitor has made it a lot easier.
In the end, it's a personal choice. By shooting RAW, you have to do more work to get the pictures you want. By shooting JPEG, your photos are done except for minor adjustments. Using iPhoto with RAW, it will take you a while. If you shoot hundreds of images at a time, prepare to be playing with your photos a bit more. Aperture is the way to handle RAW photos, I love it, and I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to shoot raw.