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August 2, 2006

Google Picasa Now for Mac, Almost

Michael Arrington

21 comments »

Google released a web uploader for the Mac tonight. This is not a Mac version of Picasa desktop software, which is still only available only for Windows and Linux machines, but it does allow Web users to upload photos from either iPhoto or from the Desktop to Picasa Web Albums.

For most Mac users this will still not be enough to switch from Flickr or one of the other online photo options, but it is a sign that Google is taking the Mac more seriously and will hopefully release a full version of Picasa for the platform soon.

This was created as a side project by an engineer on the search team named Ted Bonkenburg, with assistance from Greg Robbins and Mike Morton on the Picasa team.

Besides the lack of Mac support, my biggest complaints of Picasa are the fact that there is no syncing between online and desktop photos, and that total online storage is limited to 250 MB. For $25 per year, users can upgrade to 6 GB of total Picasa online storage.

I applaud this release, but creating a full Mac version of Picasa shouldn’t be a side project for a Google engineer - it should be a primary goal of the Picasa team along with photo syncing.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 2nd, 2006 at 10:12 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  1. TechCrunch Japanese アーカイブ » Google Picasa、Macで利用可能に… なりそうか？

    August 2nd, 2006 at 11:30 pm

  2. Zoli's Blog

    August 3rd, 2006 at 7:30 am

  3. Edugenic» Blog Archive » Google’s Picasa Web Albums Beta: Mac Tools finally available!

    August 3rd, 2006 at 8:43 am

  4. Picasa Web Albums for Mac at shadowsector.org

    August 3rd, 2006 at 2:01 pm

  5. PICASA for MAC « swyda_techblog

    April 24th, 2008 at 7:12 am

Comments

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  1. Cyphase

    August 2nd, 2006 at 10:55 pm

    “This is not a Mac version of Picasa desktop software, which is still only available only for Windows machines…”

    Actually, Picasa now runs on Linux as well.

    http://picasa.google.com/linux/

  2. Michael Arrington

    August 2nd, 2006 at 11:11 pm

    Thanks very much Cyphase, I updated the post to reflect that.

  3. met

    August 2nd, 2006 at 11:37 pm

    I hate iPhoto. Lord Google, please make Ted Bonkenberg work fulltime on Picassa for Mac.

  4. Michael Arrington

    August 2nd, 2006 at 11:41 pm

    I agree, let’s get Ted on to the Picasa team.

  5. Cyphase

    August 3rd, 2006 at 12:13 am

    Not a problem. By the way, Linux is supposed to have an uppercase L :). Just being picky.

  6. Michael Arrington

    August 3rd, 2006 at 12:23 am

    yeah, yeah. fixed it.

    :-)

  7. Diego Barros

    August 3rd, 2006 at 2:51 am

    What is it with Google and their lack of Mac support? You’d think with all that cash, all those people, they could put together a small group of Mac coders to do some kick-ass work.

  8. Whiskeybravo

    August 3rd, 2006 at 4:30 am

    Honestly, why does it matter if Picassa runs on the Mac? I use it on my PC at work and I always recommend it to friends because it is the closest COPY to iPhoto available on the PC. iPhoto does everything Picassa does and then some, and integrates with everything on my Mac. Why would I switch?

  9. Dan

    August 3rd, 2006 at 6:09 am

    I used the iPhoto plugin and think it serves its purpose—Mac users who wish to continue using iPhoto (without downloading another app!) with an integrated solution to upload photos to Picassa Web Albums. It works. Thanks Google.

  10. Zoli Erdos

    August 3rd, 2006 at 7:41 am

    Picasa used to be rock solid. The Web Albums version is buggy, in the past weeks I’ve seen countless updates that fail to properly install, I end up running multiple instances of Picasa, having to reboot multiple times, Picasa indices and thumbnails totally messed up - it got to the point that I am really worried keeping all my photos in Picasa now.
    Sounds familiar? Just like Windows Update? Google has become Microsoft.

  11. Nick Gavronsky

    August 3rd, 2006 at 8:00 am

    Being as big as they are, I just dont understand why google doesnt make their products more mac friendly.

  12. Jimmyroq

    August 3rd, 2006 at 8:42 am

    Whiskeybravo - I used to run Picasa on my PC but recently switched to a MacBook Pro. The first thing that struck me was that iPhotos is totally impossible to use with a set of > 10k photos as long as you “only” have 1 GB of RAM. Yesterday I upgraded to 2GB and now it’s pretty sweet, but still Google’s Picasa is a lot faster even on a computer with aproximately just half the CPU power and the same amount of RAM. It also has more features, is more configurable and is more intuitive to use.

    Just face it - the copy is better than the original, and I’m one of those that have been mailing Google a lot of times about a Mac version of Picasa.

    But I won’t switch from Flickr anyway.

  13. Fabian Wojtowicz

    August 3rd, 2006 at 9:39 am

    I’m using it on my PC and run pretty smoother, but everyone knows Mac requeriments are always higher than PC… may be the Mac market is not enough big to make google interested on it…

  14. Avi Flax

    August 3rd, 2006 at 10:14 am

    I really like iPhoto and I’m glad that this tool can function standalone or as an iPhoto plugin; that’ really smart. I also agree that syncing would be very useful — I currently use Flickr and FlickrExport, but I frequently am annoyed that it’s difficult to tell whether a photo has been uploaded or not.

  15. Solitude

    August 7th, 2006 at 2:58 am

    I just bought a new MacBook but iPhoto misses a lot of features from Picasa. But I was very happy to find out about CodeWeavers Crossover Mac which is currently in alpha. Picasa runs brilliantly on that. Since Picasa is built using WineLib on Linux a port for Mac shouldn’t be that far off once a final version of WineLib for Mac is released.

  16. Arlene

    February 27th, 2007 at 4:34 pm

    Need Picasa for the Mac now! Loved it when I had a PC. Get busy fella’! Please, have a Mac version soon.

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