June 13th, 2006
Google SketchUp released for Mac OS X
When Google acquired @Last Software on 14 March 2006 I got excited about the prospect of having a tidy little application to design all the house projects that I have planned for the summer. Needless to say, I was a little bummed out when I found out that the company’s SketchUp application was only available for Windows and that the Mac version was "coming soon."
It looks like Google is one of the few software companies out there that actually keeps their word when it comes to releasing Mac versions of their software. Yesterday Google announced a Mac version of SketchUp, an application for creating, viewing and modifying 3D models.
SketchUp Mac (5.0.296) has modest minimum requirements: Mac OS 10.3 (Panther), a 400 MHz PowerPC G4 and 128MB of RAM. The recommended requirements are 1 GHz G5, 512MB RAM and a 3-button, scroll-wheel mouse. SketchUp is also compatible with Google Earth (3.0.640 or higher).
Google Earth (Beta 4) supports textures and allows you to import and overlay rendered "KML" files from SketchUp on top of your maps. Some of the available KML files include:
Discovery - National Parks Tours
Travel and Leisure - Top 500 Hotels
EarthBooker - Hotels
PlaceOPedia - Links
USGS - Earthquakes
Panoramio - Photos
I highly recommend downloading Google Earth Beta 4 (which is also a Universal Binary, btw) and importing the topographical KML files for Yosemite National Park (try tilting it) and the KML file for Travel and Leisure’s Top 500 Hotels. Pictured above is the San Francisco’s City Hall KML file after being opened in Google Earth.
Jason D. O'Grady is the editor of PowerPage.org, which has been publishing daily mobile technology news since December 1995. For disclosures on Jason's industry affiliations, click here or to view Jason's full profile click here.
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