Map of the Day: Google Earth for Mac

Macintosh users rejoice! No longer will you have to be envious of your fellow Windows brethren. If you haven't heard the news, Google officially released their Google Earth client for Mac OS X on Tuesday and we can't be happier. Sure we had the beta that was leaked a few weeks back, but this is their final release.

Go ahead and download it, it's addictive. Take the rest of the day off enjoying beautiful shots of our fair city, and travel the rest of the world without leaving your house. Requires Mac OS 10.4.

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By Neil Epstein in Miscellaneous on January 12, 2006 11:50 AM

Comments [rss]

Joe

There's no way to offer high resolution daily imagery anytime soon. The satellites just don't exist and it would be unbelievably expensive to do daily, weekly or even monthly or seasonal aerial photography from aircraft.

ORBIMAGE is scheduled to launch a satellite with 0.41 meter spatial resolution next year. If you and a friend were to wear a dark shirt and a light shirt the panchromatic sensor should be able to distinguish between the two of you. Color imagery will be at 1.64 meter resolution. Revisit time will be less than three days but still not daily.

Neil Epstein

I think that was knocked down in '04, so not that far ago. Still, it's not like it's images from the 70s. Check out Microsoft's Windows Live and you'll see alot of black and white photography. Sadly, I don't think they're gonna offer daily imagery any time soon. Although wasn't something mentioned in Google's Keynote at CES?

joe

as cool as this is – and it's unbelievably cool – it doesn't seem all that current. for example, i zoomed in on the corner of broadway and houston and it still shows the old car wash and gas station... which were knocked down about 2-3 years ago.