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DESCRIPTION
EarthDesk replaces your static desktop picture with a rendered image of Earth showing correct sun, moon and city illumination.
With an internet connection, EarthDesk displays real-time global cloud cover, allowing users to track hurricanes and typhoons, or simply admire our beautiful planet. User options allow you to adjust the overall transparency of the cloud layer.
- Eleven different projections.
- Political, enhanced satellite and natural maps.
- Zoom from 50% to 400%.
- City lights appear at night.
- Atlas contains 10,000 cities.
EarthDesk gives you numerous options for configuring the map images placed on your desktop.
EarthDesk fully supports multiple displays and uses very little processor resources, running silently in the background. Universal Binary too!
WHAT'S NEW
Version 5.1.1: - Fixed a bug that displayed a corrupt cloud image, instead of re-downloading a fresh copy of the image.
REQUIREMENTS
Mac OS X 10.5 or later.
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| EarthDesk User Reviews (45 posts) | Write A Review |
 | Nov 27 2009 |
I would have liked it better if time palette were integrated with Earthdesk. I would have loved to flag cities on the earthdesk wallpaper and have the time show up alongwith the additional features of time palette. (Version 5.1.1) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
 | Oct 27 2009 |
KOSOVAR1 EarthDesk is such a resource hog, I'm sure it would benefit from being rewritten as a 64-bit program. About once a week, there is a temporary defect in the downloaded cloud cover graphic function, which mars the desktop appearance. The solution seems to be to delete the cloud graphic file and let the program re-download it from scratch. Other than this, I think the feature set is fine and it makes a dynamic and fascinating desktop for my 24" iMac. (Version 5.1) | |
| [ 1 Reply - Reply ] | |
Replies:
 | Oct 27 2009 |
EARTHDESK The Preference Pane is 64 bit (under 10.6), while some other parts are 32 bit which results in better performance. Most of the overhead is virtual memory (a memory mapped file) to hold the over 100mb of graphic data required for the displays. EarthDesk will release memory if it is needed by other apps. (Version 5.1) | |
 | Oct 3 2009 |
SYROSL just bought this app ten days ago, so far so good, but adding a little cocktail to it will be appreciated, like showing temperature or weather information, I think I'm not alone for this opinion, so waiting for another upgrade, and look forward to some new features from the dev.. btw, it's a good app and it worths the money. :D (Version 5.0.2) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
 | Aug 1 2009 |
BHOFF I'm still not upgrading until the author adds weather/temperature data. (Version 5.0.2) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
 | Jul 25 2009 |
EARTHDESK There is a setting to control this behavior in the Display Tab. You an either leave the last generated image on the screen, or remove it to restore the original desktop. (Version 5.0.1) | |
| [ 1 Reply - Reply ] | |
Replies:
 | Jul 29 2009 |
DCANNIS This setting control don't work on my machine (Version 5.0.1) | |
 | Jul 24 2009 |
DCANNIS With the latest versions (5.0.1)when I stopped Earthdesk the background turn with the map still loaded. MacBook Pro unibody 15" Intel Core 2 Duo 2,40 GHz (Version 5.0.1) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
 | Jul 9 2009 |
MC_SHIZZEL With the latest versions (5 and 5.0.1) I've noticed that sometimes the background will either turn black or white with the map partially loaded. (Version 5.0.1) | |
| [ 1 Reply - Reply ] | |
Replies:
 | Jul 11 2009 |
EARTHDESK Can you please contact us to supply more details about your hardware and some samples of what you are seeing? (Version 5.0.1) | |
 | Jul 1 2009 |
KOSOVAR1 I contacted the developer and was surprised to receive a response within two hours, along with the aforementioned (by Xeric Design) beta of EarthDesk attached. I installed beta 2 of version 5.0.1 and Voila! cloud images display now perfectly. Xeric Design's website references the known bug, although the wording there was much vaguer than how the developer explains it here. I'm living in Germany, using a brand new iMac running OSX 10.5.7 with the english module active, but with the international preference pane setting for German numbers formatting. That appears to have been the problem, but once again, EarthDesk works now without any further tinkering. Now that it works and because it seems the upgrade might be a bit snappier than version 4, I'm doubling my previous the rating, but especially for the super-fast email support. (Version 5.0) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
 | Jun 30 2009 |
KOSOVAR1 I've always liked this program when it worked. It worked well for a couple of years after I first bought version 1 or 2 (?). Then I upgraded to version 4, but it was months before I could get it to display satellite cloud images. Everything else worked OK, except for it drawing a bit heavily on system resources and being sluggish. Yesterday I upgraded--fool that I am!--to version 5 in spite of my past headaches with EarthDesk. Since then I've spent hours trying to figure out why, once again, the cloud image won't display. Since the time I was having problems with version 4 of EarthDesk, I'd switched from a Powerbook Pro 17" to a new iMac 24" and OSX version 10.5.7. The preference pane confirms "Cloud image downloaded:" with a specific date and time, but it also displays "Cloud image captured: Never" So what does this mean? I've already repaired permissions, reinstalled the preference pane, discarded the old cloud image manually and waited for the re-download, removed the old preference files, restarted, tinkered with preference pane settings, restored system permissions, over and over, and still no clouds. I am going to contact the developer again, and wait for his advice on something I haven't tried already. (Version 5.0) | |
| [ 1 Reply - Reply ] | |
Replies:
 | Jul 1 2009 |
EARTHDESK This issue is related to a non-English setting in the Number format of the International Pref Pane in System Preferences. If it is set to English, all will be well. The technical issue is that the cloud images contain an embedded date that must be parsed and the name of the month in always in English in the cloud image. That causes the parsing to fail and the cloud image is rejected as an invalid one... since EarthDesk makes sure the cloud image it shows is always more recent then the previous one. We have a beta available to solve this and a public release is expected within a couple days as we hope to address a few other minor issues as well. Thank you for your patience. This was a 100% rewrite and despite a month of beta testing, a few things escaped our testers. (Version 5.0) | |
 | Jun 7 2009 |
My 4Mgb RAM used more than 50% on it. So I got rid of it. (Version 4.8) | |
| [ 5 Replies - Reply ] | |
Replies:
 | Jun 24 2009 |
EARTHDESK Would you please contact us about this via our support page? We have not had other reports of this and it could be your settings. Note that during the cache building process, it will use much more processor power then after it is up and running. (Version 4.8) | |
 | Jul 2 2009 |
AAANOUEL After the reply received, I reviewed again the RAM it uses in my iMac and it (Earth Desk engine) takes between 85Mg and 155Mg when working. May be it's not a lot or it's normal for an application like this, but it seems to me to be too much to be used only on my desktop. (Version 5.0) | |
 | Jul 3 2009 |
AAANOUEL Right now EarthEngine has reached 170Mg of my RAM. (Version 5.0) | |
 | Jul 5 2009 |
AAANOUEL ... and now EarthDesk Engine is using 191Mg... (Version 5.0.1) | |
 | Jul 19 2009 |
AAANOUEL But to be fair, let me tell everybody that EarthDesk is really beautiful and ilustrative, renderings are great and it has a lot of features like Center Location, Zoom, and many different earth projections to fit to all needs and preferences, so finally my vote is very possitive. Only one suggestion: Please try to reduce RAM requirements. (Version 5.0.1) | |
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