Think this will work for you...
Hey I am on a similar "quest" however I have been accustomed to Mac for years now and have been using iPhoto, and think I have a better all around solution.
Image Capture would be best if all you are doing is importing and then saving images to your own file system on your computer or external HD, but then you can't take advantage of all of the management features and syncing and all that that comes with a management program.
iPhoto is great in it's own world and in "MacLand" but becomes quite the pain in the ***** when you go to look for photos from outside of any Apple software program (i.e. Photoshop). This is because iPhoto saves the photos behind the scenes by when the photos were imported; NOT by the albums or events you may set up. I'm also not 100% about iPhoto importing all RAW formats and info (think it does though).
Adobe's Photoshop Lightroom will allow for most DSLR imports and will keep the RAW data. It manages them in the folders you want. And plays well with all the Adobe suite (Adobe Bridge would also work for this but Lightroom is the "BigBrother" program I believe). The only real downfall here is it doesn't have all the great extras that come with iPhoto (book & calander creation, MobileMe, facebook, and flickr exporting/syncing, AppleTV, iPod, and iPhone album syncing, access to files natively in iDVD, iWeb, Mail, ect.)
The real solution for my needs (I believe) comes with Apple's Aperture. It is like iPhoto in that it can do all the little extras with all the Mac products, services, and software, and will sync to the outside accounts of facebook, flickr, ect. But it is better than iPhoto because you can create and manage your own folders for saving and file hierarchy (Like Lightroom). It will sync your existing iPhoto Library (either a physical transfer or just visual access) and will also allow management and viewing of files you create on your HD or external. This way you can have your cake and eat it too. It lets you choose on how you let it save; be it similar to iPhoto (by capture date) or in organized folders you create. Aperture keeps all of you RAW data for most DSLRs. This program can work in place of or in addition to iPhoto.
Aperture and Photoshop both have photo editing features built-in.
If you don't use the iLife/iWork suites on a Mac; or at least a couple of them, or MobileMe, then you may not have that large of an advantage for using Aperture over Lightroom (some that have used them both may argue differently based on more detailed features/uses). But if you are using the iLife Apple stuff then Aperture is really the best option in my opinion.