OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/20723/Google_Unleashes_Picasa_for_Mac_Beta Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Thu, 26 Nov 2009 15:10:35 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com Is there something I don't know... http://osnews.com/thread?342428 http://osnews.com/thread?342428 ...or is Google deliberately giving both Windows and Mac users fully-native versions of Picasa, while giving Linux users mere Wine "improvements" to get the Windows version running in Linux? All of the sudden, Google's "support" of Linux by helping to port their Windows version over to Wine seems like something to just shut Linux users up. Tue, 06 Jan 2009 04:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (UZ64) Comments RE: Is there something I don't know... http://osnews.com/thread?342429 http://osnews.com/thread?342429 "All of the sudden, Google's "support" of Linux by helping to port their Windows version over to Wine seems like something to just shut Linux users up."

That is nothing new. Google has always favored Windows first, OSS second. All of the apps were available for windows first and use Wine for the linux versions. The only reason people seem to think that Google supports Linux is that it uses Linux. Google also sponsors the Summer of Code projects. In general however, Google is about as friendly as Apple or Microsoft. Tue, 06 Jan 2009 04:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (DrillSgt) Comments RE[2]: Is there something I don't know... http://osnews.com/thread?342431 http://osnews.com/thread?342431
"All of the sudden, Google's "support" of Linux by helping to port their Windows version over to Wine seems like something to just shut Linux users up."

That is nothing new. Google has always favored Windows first, OSS second. All of the apps were available for windows first and use Wine for the linux versions. The only reason people seem to think that Google supports Linux is that it uses Linux. Google also sponsors the Summer of Code projects. In general however, Google is about as friendly as Apple or Microsoft.


Google did not develop Picasa, they bought the company that developed it. So this has nothing to do with Google. It would have been nice if they improved Wine rather than shipping their own custom version of it tho. Tue, 06 Jan 2009 04:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (FunkyELF) Comments RE: Is there something I don't know... http://osnews.com/thread?342432 http://osnews.com/thread?342432 Are you sure it is native? doesn't look native to me. It doesn't seem to use any of the native OS X widgets. It could be pretty much ported using Wine but with hacks to render the menu in OS X menubar. Tue, 06 Jan 2009 05:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Hussein) Comments RE[3]: Is there something I don't know... http://osnews.com/thread?342434 http://osnews.com/thread?342434 Well, they did send all their changes back to mainline Wine. If Google's version works better, it's probably because they stick to a version they know works. Wine is a rapidly-changing beast, so it's not too surprising if some things break in new versions. Tue, 06 Jan 2009 06:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (mmebane) Comments RE: Is there something I don't know... http://osnews.com/thread?342436 http://osnews.com/thread?342436 I'm happy to see Google applications run on Linux. I don't understand why you're so negative about applications that make use of wine. The fact is Picasa runs quite well with wine, which is a testament to the many thousands of hours that the wine developers have put into their project. Tue, 06 Jan 2009 07:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ngaio) Comments RE[2]: Is there something I don't know... http://osnews.com/thread?342442 http://osnews.com/thread?342442 It definitely doesn't look and feel native -- it looks a little bit like really bad GTK theme. The scrollbars are particularly weird. But upon looking in the bundle and noticing that it uses breakpad (which is also used in firefox, chrome and last.fm), dcraw and keystone (for the updater), I cannot discover anything. The main executable is a carbon thing, and there are a number of nib files around. There are no tell-tale signs of statically linked toolkits either, although there are many references to windows-specific code (especially registry handling) left.

Not sure what to conclude from that -- apart from that it looks and feels totally out of place and sort of handles icky. Tue, 06 Jan 2009 09:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (boudewijn) Comments RE[2]: Is there something I don't know... http://osnews.com/thread?342455 http://osnews.com/thread?342455 Native in the sense that it's a mac app, not a "crossover" like solution. Tue, 06 Jan 2009 12:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Adam S) Comments ... http://osnews.com/thread?342471 http://osnews.com/thread?342471 Linux users whinning about not taking the whole attention? even with their sub 1% desktop market share?

You don't say. Tue, 06 Jan 2009 14:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Yuske) Comments RE[2]: Is there something I don't know... http://osnews.com/thread?342479 http://osnews.com/thread?342479
Are you sure it is native? doesn't look native to me. It doesn't seem to use any of the native OS X widgets. It could be pretty much ported using Wine but with hacks to render the menu in OS X menubar.


Doesn't DarWINE handle everything that WINE handles?

As soon as I saw the requirements for Intel processors, I figured they'd just did the simplest of porting to get Picasa on Macs through WINE, which is about what we also got on Linux, it seems.

This means a lot of people will have downloaded it, saw the look of it, complained about it, and removed it by now. "It's not a Macintosh application." they'll whine, because it doesn't look 100 % like iPhoto. Tue, 06 Jan 2009 15:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (bousozoku) Comments Picassa for Mac not shabby http://osnews.com/thread?342482 http://osnews.com/thread?342482 Okay, maybe it doesn't follow the official Apple interface guidelines, and maybe the widgets aren't 100% native...

But after playing with the Mac beta for Picassa, I'm pretty pleased with it. It does a lot more than iPhoto, and doesn't leave me feeling like the software is treating me like an idiot "for my own good".

The true test will be my wife, who has been unhappy with iPhoto's limitations for some time now. Tue, 06 Jan 2009 16:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Akabander) Comments This is Wine http://osnews.com/thread?342538 http://osnews.com/thread?342538 This is Win crap, I'm surprised they're proud to release this. Wed, 07 Jan 2009 00:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (mckill) Comments Those scroll widgets aren't native windows either http://osnews.com/thread?342632 http://osnews.com/thread?342632 Just to chime in here a little. Those buttons and scroll widgets are not native Windows either. They're native Picasa, probably built from some other multi environment toolkit. This wasn't a real native looking Windows application (where it uses native Win32 widgets etc.) - actually looks like something from Linux.

So don't get too caught up into those scroll items (at least the scrollers on the left are Mac native, Windows version just has these custom jobs all around). The windows version doesn't have a tab interface for Import and Library either (that's different). The folders colors, appearance and perspective are different from Windows as well.Edited 2009-01-07 20:09 UTC Wed, 07 Jan 2009 20:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Sasparilla) Comments RE: Those scroll widgets aren't native windows either http://osnews.com/thread?342779 http://osnews.com/thread?342779
Just to chime in here a little. Those buttons and scroll widgets are not native Windows either. They're native Picasa, probably built from some other multi environment toolkit. This wasn't a real native looking Windows application (where it uses native Win32 widgets etc.) - actually looks like something from Linux.

So don't get too caught up into those scroll items (at least the scrollers on the left are Mac native, Windows version just has these custom jobs all around). The windows version doesn't have a tab interface for Import and Library either (that's different). The folders colors, appearance and perspective are different from Windows as well.


It sounds like you don't have the latest version of Picassa for Windows. Those tabs are there. Fri, 09 Jan 2009 00:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Chicken Blood) Comments