Way to Copy, Microsoft

July 25, 2005

So, I just checked out the new Microsoft Virtual Earth, here are my first two thoughts:

  1. “This is really slow compared to Google Maps“
  2. “This is such a rip off of Google Maps“

To clarify point one, it is much slower on than the Google equivalent on my iBook in Safari. I would also love to try the 45 degree angle deal that I am hearing about, but none of the menus work for me.

On the second point, this reminds me of the WWDC 2004 poster – “Redmond, Start Your Photocopiers”.

Tom Raftery doesn’t give it a very good report either.

  • http://www.tomrafteryit.net/views/ Tom Raftery

    Thanks for the link!

    I also couldn’t get it to work in Firefox on the mac.

    Cheers,

    Tom

  • http://jack-of-all-tradez.blogspot.com Richard Querin

    I tried it briefly as well and found it a lot slower than Google Maps, and not near as nice as Google Earth. They had quite a few features that are missing from Google Maps that were shown in the demo on the Channel Nine site weeks ago. To be honest I was really disappointed with what they actually launched with. Nevermind that they haven’t included Canada as far as I can tell. Plus, the recently released Google Earth really encompasses a lot of those features. See also my post of a month ago. I’m wondering why Google hasn’t announced a Mac port of that yet. I figured they wouldn’t want to lock people into WinXP.

  • http://www.pantsland.com Brad Kellett

    From the Google Earth system requirements page:

    Apple Macintosh computers are not supported at this time (but we are working on it).

    It will come :)