Google Earth beta released

One of the smaller bits of news in the MWSF week was that Google Earth is now officilaly released in beta form, and is available here at the Apple site. I believe the beta, like the unofficial leak, does not work in Panther– Tiger is required. Still I remember when this was all Keyhole, a paid-subscription service for Windows, and I was so tempted to purchase it, but now that Google has acquired it, turned it into a free app, and now ported it to Mac, I’m very pleased indeed.

Misc: So one of the overall reasons Apple went with Intel, instead of say AMD, now is apparent: Core Duo. I found a review of the MacBook Pro vs. current Core Duo Notebooks, it’s worth a read here. Still waiting for more multimedia TV integration and the TiVO killer app, but Apple has some serious momentum going, if you compare things the past few years at MWSF 05 and 04. It’s very promising, but I’m still hoping Apple doesn’t lose its way. They nicely handled the iTunes privacy problem, which looked like it might spiral out of control, but now the new privacy notice is very clear, as well as intstructions to opt out of the ministore (which sends your library information to Apple to compute possible purchases to show you).

And of course we just moved Macologist to a new server, and a new forum system. We’re now vBulletin instead of clunky phpBB with mods on top of mods. We still have a few things to iron out, but it’s doing well, and thanks to Rogue for the evolving slick look of the site. We also just named our Mod of the Year, so read up to look at great mods for a wide range of Mac games!

This entry was posted on January 18, 2006 at 2:55 am and is filed under Apps. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.