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Codeweavers Releases CrossOver For Intel Mac

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the schmootcamp-schmarallels dept.

dbialac writes, "Codeweavers, one of the major players in the Wine Project, have released their first beta of CrossOver for Mac. I've downloaded it and played around with it and though there are glitches, it does seem to run programs' standard features quite well."

1 of 148 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Seriously--does anyone plan on using this? by CatOne · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Seriously?

    What do you mean? Lots of people use Macs for business, or *want* to use Macs for business. Usually (this is assuming an IT department who is reasonable, and more and more actually are), it boils down to one or two business critical applications that are Windows only. Some of the most common ones are:

    * Microsoft Outlook (because Entourage is 98% of the way there... and that's not 100%)
    * Microsoft Project
    * Microsoft Visio
    * Microsoft Access (and custom databases that have become "business critical"
    * Internet Explorer 6 (with all its bastardized VBScript and .NUT client-side proprietary extensions)
    * CAD tools (Pro/E, SolidWorks, etc).

    VM solutions like Parallels (and upcoming VMWare workstation) can do this, as can Boot Camp. But Crossover is lighter weight and works well also. Crossover is a very interesting and exciting option.

    Again, this is predicated on whether IT permits it. I find IT departments are mostly divided into a couple groups:

    * IT feels their job is to dictate technology -- they choose what's most convenient for them to control and manage, and put IT's needs in front of the users needs (i.e. users who want to run Linux or OS X on the desktop must fight and scratch and are sometimes locked out of the network altogether). CrossOver is no use here, nor is Parallels -- you offend the director of IT because he'll fall out of his l337 company with his Microsoft sales rep, and will also offend his staff of 43 MSCEs that are necessary to manage one Exchange instance ;-)

    * IT who feels IT's job is to serve the needs of the business... basically they are willing to deploy and support solutions that have business value (I even heard one CIO say he let users use Macs because it was a competitive differentator when hiring... if a user could run a Mac all day at work he got more productivity out of them... this company ships tens of millions of DVDs to people in the mail every year... they're progressive ;-)

    Crossover is perfect for the second case.