Picasa for Mac is out 

yup
run real stable
fine software

Hi assbach, I downloaded Picasa a few days ago but haven't used it yet. What do you think of it? Any good? Better than iPhoto?

well, better / worse... i can't tell - i will use both.
just ordered iLife 09 and dont knwo how good the new iPhoto is
but picasas collage tool is unbeatabe i think .- VERY fast and easy. ... no risk installing it besides iphoto i think. :)

Hmmm... Yes, I have just tried Picasa - it's very fast and well-coded, but... still doesn't handle off-line hard-disks. You can import photos to your Mac hard-disk but not just as aliases, the whole files. A pointless duplication that has been there since v1.

It has a heavy bias towards Web-Albums too, which I don't use... At first I was very impressed, but I am now losing that eurphoria!!

I really like iPhoto in iLife 08, but feel the only thing of use in iPhoto 09 will be the GPS/Geotagging. Sadly I don't use all the other apps in iLife so will probably feel the cost too great just for iPhoto!! :-D

well what other tool does what you are looking for? you mean having an index ( thumbnails, tags, metadata) of your pics which are probably on some external HD which is offline. is there any tool? the database must be quie big though. i keep my (important) files online in several places and on DVDs as well as on (several) HDs. #paranoia

Ha!! Yes I get the paranoia!! Very sensible in this case!

Well I use Extensis Portfolio for cataloging. It has no editing tools though. It's great advantages are that it is rock-solid and stable + it keeps track of versions on different back-up media.

Do you have Photoshop (Elements or CS) ? With those you get Adobe Bridge - which is like Picasa really and doesn't use a database for off-line files.

I tried Qpict as well (qpict.com or qpict.net) and it is a very good database.

I suppose I just like the price of Picasa!!! :-D :-D