So, I just checked out the new Microsoft Virtual Earth, here are my first two thoughts:
- “This is really slow compared to Google Maps“
- “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.

Thanks for the link!
I also couldn’t get it to work in Firefox on the mac.
Cheers,
Tom
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.
From the Google Earth system requirements page:
It will come