In terms of automation, nothing is even close to Autopano pro. It gets things perfectly right about 95% of the time without the need to any user intervention. I am not just speaking about control points generation, but also automatic leveling,... The performance of the APG beta is also much better on OSX, that is unless you use Smartblend that is still very slow (but they are working on that too). They are also coming up with a GPU accelerated real time preview of the pano that will enable you to zoom to check things prior to launching a computation... still not working on OSX but it is coming.
In terms of control, projections options, stitching performance, multi layer output to PS,... PTgui is still tops.
In a way, APP vs PTgui is a bit like Mac vs PC.
For HDR pano, they are close but APP is also doing a better job at coming up with a good result in a totally automated fashion.
In about 6 months from now, APP should be the closest thing to the perfect stitching application in my view, but PTgui is close behind and both companies are putting an amazing fight. If only other software could progress as quickly...
In terms of release philosophy they are a bit different though. PTgui tends to release more smaller incremental updates which I like since it delivers the value to the customer quickly, while APP tends to work longer on something bigger before making it available (even as alpha or beta). I tend to prefer PTgui's approach better, but APP might come out on top in the long run.
Cheers,
Bernard