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Codeweavers Releases CrossOver For Intel Mac
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."
The top 3 most-ranked apps on their compatibility list are Office 2003, iTunes, and... Lotus Notes 6.5.1+.
To whoever is tasked with trying to make Notes run... on Linux... on a Mac...
We feel for you man.
The one and only Windows program I use is City of Heroes/Villains. I've can get the updater running, which downloads the patches, but then it goes to "Loading", and while my fans go nuts, it never actually produces anything interesting. I've checked the forums, but I can't find anything which would help. Any Slashdotters attempting this?
CrossOver Mac will be the very best way to run your Windows applications on your Intel based Mac. It will let you install and run Windows programs as though they were native, all without having to buy or run a copy of Windows itself.
In other news, the guys over at CherryOS have announced that they have a new product...
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Does it run OpenOffice?
Continues to fade away.
It won't be long before no one other than Apple and shareware are putting out native Mac apps.
Fire your Mac engineers and replace them with a README.TXT for Mac users directing them to run their app with BootCamp,Parallels, or Codeweavers. And pocket the savings.
I think the idea is that if they can get their product to behave with a few complex programs that do all sorts of weird things (especially Office 2003), then they can be sure that 99% of the other stuff will work fine.
The price you pay covers 6 (or 12 depending on which plan) of support and updates. Past this period, you can still download software you were allowed to but not new software.
Support is quite good. As opposed to almost any other company I know, they speak English and Hacker (Unix meaning off the word) not corporate (or maybe they know that language, I never initiated a conversation in it). And support also covers fixing any bug that prevents your apps from running if they were garanteed to work.
Slashdot anagrams to "Sad Sloth"
Mathematica for Mac OS X is universal.
Seriously?
.NUT client-side proprietary extensions)
;-)
;-)
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
* 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.
When looking at the apps that are most used in Codeweavers and the ones with some problems.
Office 2003
Quicken
Photoshop
IE
All of these are available as Mac Native apps except IE 6. Now maybe thereis some small app I need to run, but why not just wait until the free version of Wine is ported to OS X?
It's very nicely put together. Some thoughts...
In truth my only regrets were some crashes in Office 2003. It seemed to be unstable in the same ways that the linux version was when I last used it a couple of years ago - i.e. you will have a great experience if you stick to Office 2000, but newer stuff might come unstuck. In the end then - I hope every Mac user goes out and buys this, because at the price it is offered it is a bargain... but CodeWeavers are going to need a lot of unit sales to increase their WINE contributions.
CrossOver may not be an entirely new concept, but it looks like a decent enough compromise of Windows compatibility without having to deal with the hassles of a true Windows installation. The software works much like Apple's X11 implementation, constraining the Windows parts of the Windows applications running within it to each application's main window. This includes all menus and application-generated windows, keeping your Mac OS X environment completely uncluttered.
Aside from that, this also eliminates much of the unnecessary Windows hassles, such as activation and "phoning home"... and you even get to save money to boot.
Needless to say, intel-based Macintosh users may want to snatch this up before it goes the way of Connectix Virtual Game Station. I can't imagine Microsoft letting this get by them without a fight, when there are other options that will require users to actually own a copy of Windows.
8==8 Bones 8==8
I think you are overlooking why an IT department would "dictate" the technology used. Supporting different operating systems takes time and money. I used to be the SysAdmin for a small company. We had 5 offices 400 users. I dictated the systems and software that were used because I had limited resources with which keep everything up and running. Each office had 1 Mac to run some poorly writen database that our main supplier made us run. If one of these machines went down I would often lose a whole day working on it. Partly because of my lack of experience with Macs and partly because the software was just that bad. If more people were to run Macs, I would have had to had more training or atleast lots more time messing with them to make sure I could have them up and running all the time.
As for macs running windows software. I now do architectural drawings and reviews. I would gladly give up my Windows box for a Mac that could run Autocad. And since Autodesk doesn't seem to be making any progress maybe it could go the otherway.
MG
Randomly distributing Karma whenever possible.
Darwine is never coming near my machine again. I set up a drive mapping on it. It took my instruction to mean - rename home home directory to something stupid. I had a very painful couple of hours before I worked out what had happened, thinking I had lost all of my current files.
Honestly, Parallels is an *excellent* Windows emulator (virtualizer, whatever), and has all the features anyone could want except for games. The cost of this system (the same as Parallels, with only the Windows license) coupled with the "voodoo factor" of getting the product you want to work, means most people will probably not be that gung-ho for this. Windows is not that expensive, if you need it, and eventually Parallels will support booting from the Bootcamp volume, hence you could have one Windows license that could be used with both methods (Parallels in a window without the fancy game support, and Boot camp for real games).
You've got a friend in Japan: http://www.jlist.com
Any word on whether they will have functionality for typing in chinese? This would seem to be a function of the X11 system, not windows APIs or Mac system.
I've always liked Google's Picasa better than iPhoto, so I gave this a whirl with Picasa and it worked perfectly. I figured it would, since the Linux version of Picasa runs through Wine, and Codeweavers did a lot of the porting work for it. I just told it to scan my Y: (Y: is mapped to your home folder in Crossover Mac) and it found all of the photos in my iPhoto library and loaded them into Picasa.
The big problem with Parallels is that it is very RAM hungry. Seriously I have 1.5 GB and the virtual memory swapping when I click on parallels is simply amazing. Anything less than 2 GB is painful. So running Windows and expecting to painlessless switch between windows is a bit of a pipe dream. Don't get me wrong. I love it - it lets me run my Quickbooks and Visual Studio without booting into Boot Camp. But seamless it is not.
Or else these programs are supported by Crossover Office for Linux perhaps (which shares its database with Crossover Mac)? Your theory is hogwash, considering most unsupported applications won't run, irregardless of size, whereas huge programs like Microsoft Office will run when specifically targetted by Codeweavers. A perfect example, pretty much every Office version is supported, but the Microsoft Works install program won't even finish.
Oh shit. And here I thought using Parallels once a year to use my Windows only tax software was going to be alright when that time rolled around. Now that I know I should have never bought a Mac, even though it works better than a PC for everything else I need to do, I'm going to go and toss my Mac Mini in the garbage this instance....
Moron.
I do research which involves specialized hardware that does not currently have suitable drivers in Linux. Cygwin makes life bearable again, because I can run my X server and bring up an xterm whenever I want. (The cygwin shell is awful.) And I can use just about any software that I can care to use. Which involves more than the few commands you listed. ;) Cygwin ports typically aren't too hard to find.
The big problem with Parallels is that it is very RAM hungry. Seriously I have 1.5 GB and the virtual memory swapping when I click on parallels is simply amazing. Anything less than 2 GB is painful. So running Windows and expecting to painlessless switch between windows is a bit of a pipe dream. Don't get me wrong. I love it - it lets me run my Quickbooks and Visual Studio without booting into Boot Camp. But seamless it is not.
A lot of that depends on how much RAM you assign to the VM. I run Parallels and only give the virtual machine 256 MB of RAM. As a result, my OS X experience is perfectly smooth, but things are a little choppy inside the VM. I'm running very lightweight stuff inside the VM, though, so that works fine for me. You might try tuning how much memory you've assigned to the VM until you reach a point where you're happier about the balance between host and guest OS performance.
Crossover will not survive in corporations when Parallels is around. Why support something that might 90% work when you can just run Windows in Parallels and be done with it?
Never underestimate support costs and their influence on corporate policy.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
Considering that CrossOver is at best a less-than-reliable solution, I would have thought that a better solution would be to port PC apps to the Mac using WineLib. A bit like the easiest way to bring a Unix app to Windows is to compile it against the cygwin libs....
That way the bulk of the app works straight away (getting rid of the majority of porting work), and all that remains afterwards is correcting the nitty-gritty bugs that the WineLib doesn't handle quite correctly.
If more developers did this, we would very soon have a very complete WineLib, and the question of which platform you develop for would be null and void...
Mac loyalists are a shrinking breed. As more mundanes switch to the Mac OS and take their software with them (via Wine) they will become marginalised on their own platform.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Looking at the codeweaver website and also the numbers of common applications that have some kind of problems...it would not be wise to get Crossover on my MAC !!!
The same argument holds true for VMware and Crossover on Linux. Really, when Crossover works properly the experience is light years ahead of running Windows inside a VM. What kind of business would deploy Macs (or Linux) and then have their employees run Windows in a VM all day? Only a stupid one .... it would just beg the question of why not run Windows anyway, seeing as how you need the license?
Just like VMWARE for the Intel Mac, this is huge for allowing people to, well, cross over (good choice of name, Crossover) to the Mac. And in many situations (running specific windows applications), Crossover is a far better solution. *Way* less resource hungry (it allocates memory as required, it doesn't allocate a whole 512M [or whatever] VM to run a whole Windows operating system), *plus* it uses the native file system (without some fake shared directory thing, a la VMWARE - which is cool and useful, but not as slick nor as efficient as Crossover's view of the file system).
Once it leaves beta, this might just be what pushes me over the edge to get a Mac.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
They do know that language, and every employee in the company has a duty to do product support - even the Wine maintainer himself. So, if you are technically conversant you can usually get talking to the person who wrote the misbehaving code in question and there is also an IRC channel, #crossover on FreeNode, where you can go talk to the developers, CEO, support guys etc.
Specifically a lot of work has been done on the RPC layer so Outlook can fully connect to an Exchange server, with all the features. As far as I'm aware it's the only program that can do that ...
Crossover could be a terrific tool for web developers. For most web developers, IE6 is the source of many headaches. If you develop on a Mac and want to test on a PC without owning a copy of Windows, without dedicating tons of resources to virtualization, then WINE/Crossover seems like a great solution. Unfortunately for me, I haven't been able to get IE6 to work properly. It will display certain sites but not all sites. I guess this is still Beta software though.
I don't own a Mac, and even though I've played with one for a while, I am not very familiar with its internals.
Could you explain why a non-native binary will work faster than a native one?
The saddest poem
... I throw Mutorrent and Shareaza at them to see if they stick.
It may not be very scientific or fair to do this but those are the only Windows programs I actually miss.
Neither Wine or CrossOver can run these programs yet. So, Parallels still gets my vote thus far. It may be a kitchen sink approach but it actually works.
Surely there's a cross platform API that's better than the godawful bend-over-for-Microsoft Win32 API.
I've always written for the base UNIX API (which is available under Windows, and will be a native API in Vista if (as reported) Interix is included) with the GUI written using a scripting language and Tk. This produces apps that have a native user interface under UNIX, Windows, Mac OS X, and even (with care) old Mac OS. Surely I can't be the only one.
I work in an organization that swears by Visio for system drawings.
Recently, I was working in a lab environment using Asterisk on my laptop to simulate an international IP carrier. Since I was "stuck" in linux-land during this project I used Dia to draw all my network and VoIP diagrams.
I actually found it much easier and faster to use Dia as a diagramming tool.
On a whim, I decided to "fink install dia" this morning. Seems to work just fine. The only problem I have now will be explaining to people: "How did you do that with Visio?"
With a virtualization solution, the number of licenses required to be dealt with (Free licenses still have to be 'dealt with', i.e. make sure your usage legally matches the license) is at least four:
-The host os
-The virtualization software
-The guest os
-The application
For crossover it's three:
-The host os
-Crossover
-The application
The Windows license is expensive, and if you have commercial support from Crossover office for the app, it's not something that 'might work 90%', it is something that the vendor is legally obligated to get to work 100%. Crossover is fairly specific about what they provide support for, and for those applications it isn't 9/10 assed, it's supposed to work right or they have to help you make it work right.
Add to that some complications in virtualization (overhead of full guest os in terms of storage, paradigm of switching between OSes intrusive (both in terms of interface and filesystem space). Virtualization is needed/appropriate for some desktop scenarios, and more server scenarios, but I'm just stressing the counterpoints to show crossover is not a solution made irrelevant by virtualization.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
IT depts. that are efficient and effective choose the software and hardware platforms they can support and standardize on it and provide support to those platforms. I accept this is a realistic expectation to set, an IT dept can only do so much and to fund an IT dept to be capable of doing all things for all people is just bad business.
IT depts however may lose some of that effectiveness and efficiency when they start mandating only what they approve is allowed and start taking proactive measures to keep employees in line. For example, most of my past was IT. I would depending on the company officially support whatever the company wanted to use. If that company approved of Solaris and Windows, and a Linux user called for software help, I would simply respond that I can't help them, but they are welcome to try to figure it out themselves or have me assist with a supported solution, even if I knew full well I could fix their problem if I gave a little time for it. A bad IT department may spend extra effort to reprimand the user for ever using linux and do all kinds of ungodly things to the infrastructure to more obviously break Linux clients as a deterrent in this example.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Oh, heavens, no! I use a Mac in my law business, and for the most part it is superb. But occasionally I get documents in WordPerfect, and although I can open them in other programs (NeoOffice is my choice at the moment) it would be very nice to be able to use WordPerfect itself. (I loved WordPerfect on Mac OS 7 . . . .) My partner and I also have a couple of other programs that run only in Windows, so I currently use Parallels on my MacBook. If CrossOver had been available and fully functional for WordPerfect and the other programs (WordPerfect would not install under it; I did not try the others), I could have dispensed with the cost of a Windows license.
:-)
There is nothing wrong with a bit of cross-platform compatibility built into a Mac.
I don't see the point. The Mac and PC demographics are fundamentally different, as are the applications they need to run. If you need to run Windows apps on a Mac, maybe you shouldn't have bought a Mac to begin with.
Migrations usually require intermediate steps. For example, my company has a significant investment in mac software for my workstation to the tune of several thousand dollars. I need to work with some Windows only software for a new project. If I didn't already have a Windows box as well, it is cheaper to buy me a new laptop that can run the Windows software via Parallels or Crossover than to purchase new, Windows licenses for the software I use. For other people, they may have a thousand dollars invested in old video games and miscellaneous software. Until they run a mac, they don't know which of that software they will still want to use or what the cost of purchasing new versions will be. A few bucks for a virtualization environment is an easy, affordable solution.
I have to run both Windows and Mac only software every day to do my job. Right now that is accomplished with multiple computers. The PO is already in for my new MacBook, which will allow me to run Windows and Mac software as well as some custom Linux and OpenBSD systems. This will make my job more portable and require a lot less network bandwidth between the coffee shop and the office. It is also a lot cheaper than regularly upgrading three or more machines for me.
It is also interesting to note that when we hired a new sysadmin, experience with OS X was a requirement for the position. Our company does software development for really expensive network security solutions on Linux and OpenBSD.
>* Internet Explorer 6 (with all its bastardized VBScript and .NUT client-side proprietary extensions)
And, most of all, Active Hex. I plan to test some intranet sites with Crossover as soon as I can get a test account. Running Active X content in a Crossover bottle might actually be somewhat secure.
to be frank, (or louis)
no you didn't run those macros faster. You ran them under emulation, and office 98 for the mac wasn't the dog that office 2004 for the mac is. While softpc was the best of it's day, (killed virtual PC in terms of performance) they were still emulating an entire architecture, while crossover just redirects api's using wine's library.
rosetta is not that slow.
mod parent down, and kill the idiot that marked it insightful
The only windows apps I really need are IE (for web dev compatibility testing) and Outlook (since Entourage doesn't fully support Exchange calendars and master contact lists), and I'd rather not boot windows to do that. So Crossover wins in my case. Also, Crossover does what I need with a much, much smaller processor and memory footprint, which is a large bonus when running a notebook on battery.
Crossover will not survive in corporations when Parallels is around.
That would depend on the immediacy of need, seeing as the "days" to get a working Parallels update for the Mac Pro is becoming "weeks".
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
If you don't like the default cygwin command window, and don't need an X server for other reasons, you can run rxvt. It works quite well, and doesn't require X.
# (/.);;
- : float -> float -> float =
why not just wait until the free version of Wine is ported to OS X?
Because you can't or don't want to wait? I'm planning on getting getting a Macbook Pro when Apple releases one with Merom, Intel's new Core 2, which I'm hoping will be annouced during the Paris Expo if not sooner and I'll install my WinTel Macromedia Studio and I may get Photoshop CS. However Adobe won't release a native port of CS for MacTels until they release the next version. So I may get a WinTel version which I can use CrossOver to install it on my MacBook. At first I was thinking of just getting Parallels but I'll probably get CrossOver for Macs instead.
Quicken
Because I don't know when Apple will release the MacBook Pro with the Merom processor I've been thinking about getting a Mac Mini as my PC is in it's deaththrows, and I noticed the Minis come with Quicken installed. I didn't see whether the MacBook come with it or not, and I don't know how GNUCash or OpenOffice's financial software is, so if it doesn't come with Quicken I may use what comes with the Mini. Next I'll have to see if I can find an archive where I can download the compleat version of, or find a disk with, IE so I do some testing.
FalconShould there be a Law?
There's an entire industry of web app developers out there who wouldn't know browser portability if it walked up and told them its name.
That's unfortunately too true. Though I don't work in the industry now I am studying and working on it and hope to be able to work in it while working on my degree. I just got Jeff Zeldman's 2nd ed of his "designing with web standards" and am looking forward to working my way through it. Now I'm waiting to get a new MacBook Pro with the Merom processor.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Why support something that might 90% work when you can just run Windows in Parallels and be done with it?
Parallels uses more memory and CPU to get the same job done because it runs the whole OS, not just the needed parts. Because of this, it usually runs them more slowly and without 3d graphics support. Parallels looks less integrated because you don't just get the application on your screen, you get Windows in a Window and the application in that, using more real estate and possibly providing more confusion. Both Parallels and Crossover cost about the same, but Parallels requires you license a copy of Windows, Crossover does not.
Parallels is the broad but shallow solution. It works for more software, with less hassle, but works more slowly, with more overhead and expense. Crossover works faster, with fewer resources and can support 3D graphics, but won't work for all programs. It is better for targeted use of one or two applications.
Whether any of them are native ports to MacTels yet I don't know but there are a number of CAD tools for Macs. I even found a community of Mac using CAD designers when doing a search sometime back. On obviously a specific shop may require the use of a package only available on a PC.
* IT feels their job is to dictate technology
I've heard somewhat the opposite from IT people, complaints that the head office or something wants IT to use something specific when a better alternative exists. As with many other things it's possible for the pendullum to swing both ways.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Oh, so users should have to put up with telnet as the only command line solution (rather than sshd), and with the CMD/BAT langage inherited from MS-DOS rather than bash or ksh?
Apparantly even Microsoft disagrees with you. Google for "monad"
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Honestly, Parallels is an *excellent* Windows emulator (virtualizer, whatever), and has all the features anyone could want except for games. The cost of this system (the same as Parallels, with only the Windows license) coupled with the "voodoo factor" of getting the product you want to work, means most people will probably not be that gung-ho for this.
I was thinking of getting Parallels for my MacBook but now I'll get CrossOver instead. The cost of it may be the same as Parallels but as you say I won't have to pay for a Windows license, nor will I have to Activate it, or have WGA check to make sure I am running "Genuine Windows". Actually it's because of MS's Activation policy that I'm switching from Windows to Macs. Yes, I use Windows now, I'm typing this on an HP PC. However it is on it's last legs, being more than six years old, and I plan on replacing it with a MacBook Pro. I'm just waiting for Apple to release a MacBook with the new Merom cpus. I may buy a Mac Mini today, er tomorrow, to tide me over. After I get a new Mac I'll get CrossOver so I can install my Windows apps I use now. Using CrossOver my apps will run faster than running them in a virtual window running Windose.
FalconShould there be a Law?
That's something I'm hoping to see in Leopard, the ability to run Windows apps without also running Windows or CrossOver, with the Windows APIs in the OS.
Should there be a Law?
One suggestion is, set up the XP VM with just 128 mb of memory. it's enough for XP, load/saving will be fast, and swapping seems to be minimal. It's only a problem for people who are doing things like, running all the Adobe apps alongside Parallels (like me, most of the time).
You've got a friend in Japan: http://www.jlist.com
No, I understand why IT would dictate it. There are many reasons -- some good, some not so good.
It doesn't change the fact, though, that it really depends on IT's defined role in the organization. Are they there to support their users (and whatever their users see as necessary to be efficient), or to make IT's life of supporting the users easy? This is a balancing act -- and if supporting multiple platforms (Windows, Linux, OS X, Solaris, whatever...) is important, then in many cases it will be necessary to add IT staff to perform this. This has a cost, of course -- one the company must be prepared to pay.
Why?
Because with Parallels you need to pay for Parallels, and you need to pay for a Windows license. This is substantially more than the "$0" you pay to Microsoft for a Windows license with Crossover. Big difference, if all you need is one or two applications.
Are they there to support their users (and whatever their users see as necessary to be efficient), or to make IT's life of supporting the users easy
The role of an IT department is to help people get thier jobs done effeciently. If people running linux or macs helps them do thier jobs better, then a case needs to be made for supporting the systems they need. If supporting a new system cost X number of dollars but produces 2X in productivity, it would have to be a foolish IT manager that wouldn't back that choice. Not that there isn't a million foolish IT managers around.
I think the real problem come in when people want systems just because they can. I've seen small companies where there is windows, macs, and a couple of versions of linux on desktops. What you end up with there is developers wasting time supporting thier desktops when they should be producing product. Or atleast reading thier email or Slashdot.
MG
Randomly distributing Karma whenever possible.