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.

[uiucmatse]

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.

[TheRaven64]

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).

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

[fyngyrz]

...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...

[JonathanBoyd]

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

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

[fyngyrz]

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.

I see your point, though this doesn't affect me the way it does you.

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 ;^)

No, it's an OSX thing. I just opened finder, clicked into a directory so the window was well and truly focused and so on, then clicked a link in Safari which was visible below the finder window. Safari came to the top and the window became active, but the link was not followed. These are both about as native OSX app as you can get. This happens all over the place. If you watch for it, I think you'll find it soon enough. Anyway, this isn't so much a poster child for consistancy as it is for someone in the UI department needing a bit of a beating. :)

Only true if only window is visible. If multiple windows are visible, as would be required in the GIMP, then they're all using up screen space.

No. Because the window that has the focus is on top, so it can never be obscured by any other window, GIMP's or otherwise. That's why window-based menus can never get in each other's way.

But ti takes longer to get them because they're smaller targets. If I want to get to the top of the screen, I can be there in an instant from anymore. So I definitely disagree, though in an amicable fashion, as befits the tone of this debate :)

Huh. Well, I'll buy your argument if you'll tell me how you get to the top of the screen in an instant. I can't, as far as I know -- it's further to roll the mouse to the top than it is to the top of a window, barring the single exception where the window is at the top anyway (in which case it takes just as long.) For me, I have no trouble hitting a UI element, and there's no particular speed difference. I've been mousing just about since there were mice and GUIs, though, and that could be a factor. I paint and draw with a mouse, too, though to be fair, I usually have a considerably better interface to work with than is available on the Mac for image processing and effects work. Not only faster, but more efficient and more flexible, because it naturally uses more of what a mouse can do. I am very, very precise with a mouse, so in-window menus are just no problem at all. So -- how do you get right to the top of the display with less moves than it takes to get to the top of a window that is, for instance, showing its title bar at the bottom third of the display?

I'm not sure how fair a comparison it is, given that the features in Quicktime are fairly rich, if you do pay for them. It would be like criticising shareware for not being feature-full if you didn't register it.

Well, I really wasn't trying to go there -- I was trying to say that given two programs that addressed any particular area, I would go for the one that gave me the most features, tools, capabilities, not the one that was UI compliant, that's all. Quicktime was probably a poor example, especially since I wasn't specific about what other software I had in mind. Again, my apologies.

Anyway, thanks for a pleasant discussion.

Likewise. :-)

Re:live.com anyone?

[aristotle-dude]

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.