Google Earth Beta for Mac

Thijs van As writes "AppleInsider reports that Google is developing a Google Earth version for Mac OS X. From the screenshots it looks similar to the Windows version, which is out since June 2005. The OS X version uses OpenGL rendering." From the article: "Earlier this month, a pre-release version of Google Earth for Mac OS X that uses OpenGL rendering reportedly began making the rounds overseas. The 40MB application packs a hefty set of preferences, allowing users to tweak detail and color, and control the speed of their 'flights.' Google Earth interfaces with Google's Web-based mapping service, Google Maps, in providing local search results and driving directions. However, sources say Google Earth for Mac OS X includes a superior set of satellite imagery when compared to the Google Maps Web service, offering additional clarity and a deeper zoom function."

Fell off the ugly tree and hit every branch.

Whew, that is ugly. It looks like, I dunno, Limewire.

The tabs that haven't been used since 10.2, the cheesy movement controls, the ugly shiny candy headers on Places and Layers...

Well, at least it's not metal.

Re:Fell off the ugly tree and hit every branch.

No, take a closer look at the title bars - they are the newer style which came in with 10.3, so the demo machine must be running at least 10.3 but still using 10.2-style controls. The only other time I've seen an app this ugly on a Mac, Qt was to blame - I hope this isn't the reason here, because if it is then looking ugly will be the least of its problems (Qt messes up the feel a lot worse than it messes up the look).

Re:Fell off the ugly tree and hit every branch.

Apple implement the OpenStep specification - a cross platform spec for development of GUI applications. Sun also provided an implementation at one point, and the GNU project provides one in the form of GNUstep, which runs happily on all UNIX variants I've encountered and only slightly less happily on Windows. I, and many others, have no problems developing cross-platform apps which look and feel native on OS X.

Re:Fell off the ugly tree and hit every branch.

Looks pretty similar to the Windows version to me

I think that's what they meant when they said ugly. ;)

I really don't care what it looks like...

...I'm just happy to see it. While I enjoy pretty, what actually matters to me is functionality and reliability. And in this case, simply availability — this has been beta under Windows for quite some time already.

Too much focus on pretty can result in the "Hollywood Effect" —beauty without value, or worse, beauty that impacts value... like recent media player designs or the incredibly bad Kai's interfaces of yore. I've had enough of that kind of craziness.

Re:I really don't care what it looks like...

We're not talking about 'pretty' here. The main gripe the mac community has with programs like this is that they do not follow the conventions of a normal OS X user interface. A 'pretty' media player would have the same problem.

The strength of the Cocoa and Carbon windowing toolkits has allowed many first-rate applications to be developed without requiring the developers to resort to creating their own (ugly) controls. Windows has been guilty of this on many accounts, and microsoft's only beginning to make up for it with .NET. It's not uncommon to see custom UIs in Windows such as Winamp, GEarth, iTunes, Trillian, etc.... because the standard UI controls available are simply not sufficent to create a usable, streamlined application that's also visually appealing.

In contrast, GEarth could operate just fine using standard OS X controls and conforming to the OS X UI Guidelines [apple.com]. Using a standardized toolkit also has many nice perks like that drag-and-drop *always* works.

Re:I really don't care what it looks like...

And my exact point is that this affects its value not at all. The only thing that will affect its value here is if the user, that is, me, or you, decides to take an attitude that we're unwilling to use it because it is inconsistant.

The problem with inconsistency is that programs do things you don't expect. If you spend 95% of your time working one way, but have to work a different way for the other 5%, it becomes pretty inconvenient. For instance, most of the time when I'm typing, I'm using my Mac and the cursor selects whatever line is in the middle of the text cursor. Part of my work, however, involves doing an announcement sheet for church every week in Corel Draw on Windows. For some unexplained reason, it selects whatever line is under the bottom third of the cursor. This drives me nuts because my instinct is select with the middle of the cursor and end up selecting the wrong line quite a bit of the time.

It also has a bizarre convention whereby if you drag select from somewhere on a line to the start of it, then make changes to the formatting of the line, it will also select the carriage return on the previous line and apply formatting to it. Consequently I often have to drag select to the 2nd letter of a line, then shift-left cursor select the first letter. After 14 weeks of use, I have come to loath this program because it does not follow the conventions that I'm accustomed to. Arguably, it's just plain bad design, rather than inconsistency, but I think the inconsistency is still a factor.

You missed my point entirely.

Indeed I did. I apologise. Thought you were talking about clicking a window in the foreground application. My bad.

Say you're using Finder. So a Finder window is active ... Now you have to click again, on the same button, to get the result you should have already had.

That is indeed annoying. Trying that out in other apps, however, clicking a button in a background application activates the button, so the problem would seem to lie with an inconsistency with the GIMP, rather than bad OS X GUI design. One more mark against inconsistency ;^)

The menu at the top uses considerable vertical space, all the time, which is unusable for all applications. You can't get a window to cover the menu bar. At least, I can't in 10.3.9.

Can't in 10.4.3 either, which I'm fairly happy about. Wouldn't want to lose sight of my menubar. It's fairly full. It's only a wee bit of vertical space, especially compared to the resolution of modern screens. Though if you're using multiple monitors, then you only need a menubar on one screen and can avoid them entirely on others, thereby saving space.

Windows may, or may not, require a menu. For some (dialogs, for instance) a YES or NO or even simply OK is all the UI they need. This can be true of much more complex applications as well; if the developer is allowed to make that choice, of course

True, but document windows all seem to have them, which irritates me greatly in Windows. Though the inconsistency in multi-document and single-document interfaces annoys me more. And the inefficient taskbar. And the way that opening multiple files belonging to one program sometimes loads the files into separate windows in one instance of the application, while launching several instances of the application in other cases. And not being able to open a bunch of files by double-clicking on a selected group. But I'm getting a bit off-subject here. I find Windows stressful. It just gets in the way so much.

If a menu is embeddded in a window, say, application A, and there is no menu at the top of the screen, then application A may be dragged to the top of the screen, thus providing menu-on-top functionality if you like it.

Only really works

google earth beta download

well you dont have to wait for it http://mypersonalgetaway.com/ [mypersonalgetaway.com]

Re:google earth beta download

Very very cool. I have it running on my computer right now. Runs great on my 1.67 powerbook. AWESOME, thanks!

One other Google port that would be nice.

One other Google port that I would love to see for OS X would be Picasa [google.com]. Such a great program for organizing and keeping track of your photos (much better than iPhoto in my opinion).

torrent please?

where can I get it? I don't see any useful links in the article or on the google earth page.

For similar functionality with more focus on sci

There is Earthbrowser on OS X (and win32) for ages. I don't think it is same with Google earth but it is much more educational and fun program.

They now added satellite photos feature so makes it more cool.

It is installed on many schools,universities but doesn't make it "boring". Especially on hurricane season. ;)

Check yourself

http://www.earthbrowser.com/ [earthbrowser.com]

Re:For similar functionality with more focus on sc

Another interesting program is Celestia [shatters.net]. I haven't tried any, but there are apparently lots of available high-resolution images available for various parts of the Earth as well as higher-resolution images for some of the other planets. The controls for moving around aren't intuitive, but it is a lot of fun to go zooming around the galaxy (and even some nearby galaxies, rendered as grayish-looking 3-d blobs).

Does it require 10.4?

I tried to use it on a PB running 10.3.9 and it never appeared in the dock after double clicking. . . Usual behavior for those apps that require 10.4.

download

SHIT! I waited half a day for someone to list the download site - and noone did!

If you want to download it, here it is. [macupdate.com]

Google Earth for Mac

I downloaded Google Earth (Beta) 3.1.0171.0 build 12/1/05 (from MacUpdate) and it works well. Blazingly fast, as compared to a PC in medium resolution mode (512 x 512). Still a beta though, no printing, email, web etc. but it really flys!

flash based google earth

This website has google earth as well as msn virtual earth accessable via web browser, so it is compatible with mac, linux, what ever has a flash enabled browser

http://www.flashearth.com/ [flashearth.com]

NASA WorldWind and alike on MacOS X

This is indeed really great news. Let's not forget the open NASA WorldWind [nasa.gov] project also has Java/OpenGL versions in development for MacOS X and Linux [csoft.net] and that WorldWind itself has been forked [slashgisrs.org] into Punt [sourceforge.net].

If you're serious about geospatial, you might be interested in joining us [slashgisrs.org] :-)

What took so long?

If the application was written in QT, why didn't we see this sooner? Isn't that the whole idea of using QT - to get a cross platform set of GUI components so that you only really need to worry about the program logic underneath?

I guess its possible that if the Windows version is using DirectX and the "other" versions are using OpenGL, that could be the cause for delay. However, I think QT might abstract the GL library anyway?

Well, its about time anyway.

Re:why did they choose windows first, instead...

Because they bought an existing Windows product?

Re:why did they choose windows first, instead...

Uh, probably because they wanted to reach an audience of 90+% of the computing planet instead of trying to adhere to some technology religious standard.

Re:why did they choose windows first, instead...

why did they choose windows first, instead...of a solution that was cross platform, like Java or python or perl?

Google didn't develop it from scratch. They bought up a company called Keyhole. Google Earth is basically a free version of Keyhole's $400 product, which is now "Google Earth Pro".

They bought it.

Google didn't write it; they bought it as a Windows-only program [newrecruit.org] from somebody else.

Re:why did they choose windows first, instead...

Because they wanted it to be fast? Cripes, the last thing I want running on my PC or my Mac is some bloated Java/Python/Perl app. :P

Re:live.com anyone?

This story is about the OS X version of Google Earth. MSFT's answer does not work on Safari which is the dominant browser on OS X. Maybe you are confusing Google earth with Google Maps [google.com]? In any event, I cannot see how decades old aerial photography can compare with recently updated (within last two months) satellite imagery. If you were to try Google Earth, you would find that it sports higher resolution imagines than their google maps service.