Last Tuesday, Google released some new features for Picasa Web Albums, as well as a new version of its desktop photo management software, Picasa. New features for Picasa 3 and Web Albums include syncing between the desktop app and Web Albums, photo retouching (in Picasa 3), the ability to do a quick preview of image files with Picasa Photo Viewer (Picasa 3), screen capture (Picasa 3), creation and editing of movies (Picasa 3), and the very cool tagging feature that uses facial recognition technology to help you quickly tag people in your photos.
I checked out Picasa Web Albums features last week, and the people tagging feature would almost be enough to get me to switch from Flickr. I tested it using several different types of pictures, some side views, some with low-light, and some taken with a phone camera, and the ability to recognize faces was amazing.
The problem, however, is that Google has done the same thing with virtually every one of its new releases: blocked me from using it. Picasa, as well as Chrome and Lively, are all Windows-exclusive products. What does Google have against Apple's OS X?
Recent data from Net Applications shows Apple operating systems steadily increasing their market share month after month, with nearly 8% of the total market that Net Applications surveys, up 32% over the past year. Apple users may still be a minority for Google, but as a growing population, wouldn't it make sense for Google to court them? Instead, Mac users are given "indefinite" timeframe for Mac versions of new Google releases.
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I am frustrated waiting for Picasa for the Mac. It is a fantastic program and one of the best photo editing and managing sofware that I know of. As soon as they release it, I can finally ditch the windows machine at home and switch to mac!
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