Picasa for Mac Released

[Joe Johaneman]

<p><em>"Last year we had a blast at Macworld demonstrating all our Mac products, but as Mac users, we also know that the best part of Macworld is new product announcements. This year, we're getting in the spirit by making a little announcement of our own: we're happy to say that Picasa, Google's photo management software, will be joining the ranks of the free Mac OS X applications from Google!"</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/at/auto/1231212632.usr105505.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #d2d2bb;" /></p><p>I, for one, am glad that Picasa will finally be available for the Mac.&nbsp; It's a great program.&nbsp; Some of the features are currently not available in the Mac version, and the Mac version is currently tagged as a beta.&nbsp; You can download Picasa at <a href="http://picasa.google.com/mac/" target="_blank">Google Labs</a>.&nbsp; What do you guys think?&nbsp; Are you as excited about Picasa for Mac as I am?&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>

[Vincent Ferrari]

Good riddance iPhoto.

That's all I have to say.

[ptyork]

Yup, as a x-platform guy, it is great to see my photo manager of choice make it to the Mac. It's a LOT slow importing pics directly from CF to a network drive (like 30 seconds per pic slow--I'll be importing in two steps next time), but otherwise it might be even smoother than the Windows version. Very nice.

[Jason Dunn]

Picasa is a truly awesome program, so it's cool to see that they're giving Apple users an option beyond iPhoto.

[Macguy59]

Good riddance iPhoto.

That's all I have to say.

I'll second that.

[Spooof]

This is very good news. I plan to play with it tonight.

[doogald]

I just tried it. Color me underwhelmed. It's got a weird interface for one thing, and after spending 20 minutes coding faces in my Picasa Web Albums, it doesn't sync (or even have the feature) on the desktop app? Huh?

I want it on the desktop, which has all of my photos, rather than on the web, which has a very small subset.

We'll have to see how it develops, though.

[ptyork]

I just tried it. Color me underwhelmed. It's got a weird interface for one thing, and after spending 20 minutes coding faces in my Picasa Web Albums, it doesn't sync (or even have the feature) on the desktop app? Huh?

I want it on the desktop, which has all of my photos, rather than on the web, which has a very small subset.

Sheesh! iPhoto gets a "new" feature and already the forerunners are crap!?! :)

I agree, though. Face recognition needs to be added to the desktop, as well. This is an issue with both Win and Mac versions. That said, to get this functionality, you pay $79/yr. for iLife ("defacto" subscription) and $99/yr. for MobileMe. Actually, does MobileMe even have face tagging and geo tagging?

As for a weird interface, I guess it is just what you're used to. However, I find it funny that you'd call it "weird." It is quite similar to iPhoto, only (if anything) a bit more simplified. I think the new version of iPhoto might leapfrog it a little bit feature-wise, but I'll bet you that 1) Google will release a new version with similar features within the next year or so, and 2) it won't cost $79 to upgrade. ;)