Aperture cropping frame is always landscape/horizontal

Yes me too and on portrait shaped images it cuts the top of them when you select the crop tool.

I can still crop arbitrary sizes in Aperture 3.2, if I set the Aspect Ratio to "Custom" in the crop tool, but I have to set the desired width and height in advance. Previously these values could be set by dragging the boundaries of the cropping window, which was much more convenient.