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What Picassa for Mac Means for iPhoto Users

By EAN ⋅ January 18, 2008 ⋅  Email this Post ⋅  Print this Post ⋅ Post a Comment

When I made the switch to Mac OS X, there was only one program that I was sad I had to leave behind. Google’s fantastic photo manager, Picasa. I like iPhoto, but it’s not the same as Picasa. It feels more complex but less powerful than Picasa–rather a nagging problem. And it just doesn’t have the features I grew used to on Windows. No automatic additions to the library. The iPhoto library is tied up in an “inaccessible” package. There don’t seem to be as many photo editing features. And it doesn’t feel as snappy as Picasa does. The integration with other OS X apps, however–fantastic!

So there I was, a couple of days ago, lamenting the lack of Picasa for the Mac as I organized some new photos, when I stumbled on this article from TechCrunch. Did my eyes deceive me? Is Google developing a version of Picasa for the Mac? And it will be out sometime this year? I was overjoyed.

But what does this mean to current iPhoto users? Well, it all depends on how Google goes about implementing Picasa for the Mac. They may want to go for the throat and persuade .Mac users to ditch their expensive subscriptions for the more reasonably priced (read: free) Picasa Web Albums. Now that would be a great, although tricky, move for Google. It could cause Apple to slightly lower their prices on .Mac service, which, of course, is always good for the end user. And yes, I know that .Mac does more than just allow you to put photos on the web–but it’s still overpriced.

Alternatively, Google could simply release a crippled Windows port to the Mac so as not to jeopardize the business relationship between Google and Apple. The entire iLife suite is a major moneymaker for Apple, with iPhoto and iMovie generally considered the killer apps from the bundle. This theory, I hope, is not the case. Though I doubt it would be, given that we can already integrate Picasa Web Albums support into iPhoto.

So will Picasa end up turning droves of Mac users away from iPhoto? I doubt it. As I mentioned earlier, iPhoto’s integration into the operating system is spot on, and Google’s not going to top that. However, I can picture quite a few Mac users working with both Picasa and iPhoto depending on the task at hand.

Ultimately, there’s just one thing I want. An untouched Picasa port with support for iPhoto ‘08 library package access so that I can share the library between Picasa and iPhoto. Lightroom’s access to the iPhoto library is spotty at best, and I just hope Google can manage better than Adobe.