CrossOver Mac - run Windows apps on your Intel Mac

[dcv]

http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/31/crossover-mac-beta-released-run-windows-apps-in-os-x/

Please, for the love of god, somebody with an intel mac try this!

[picch]

Hey Josh.....*wink*

[amccabe]

I can't think of a practical application for this. I had Windows under Parallels, then switched to Boot Camp. I have Windows for "Windows only" multimedia apps and to play with.

I have used Wine on Linux for MeetingMaker and other Windows apps that have no Linux version. But CrossOver Mac sounds like it is redundant. If it ran perfectly and at native speed, then maybe I could see a reason to use it.

[dcv]

I can't think of a practical application for this. I had Windows under Parallels, then switched to Boot Camp. I have Windows for "Windows only" multimedia apps and to play with.

I have used Wine on Linux for MeetingMaker and other Windows apps that have no Linux version. But CrossOver Mac sounds like it is redundant. If it ran perfectly and at native speed, then maybe I could see a reason to use it.

I think that the practical application is this - running Windows-only apps without having to buy a copy of Windows. Both Parallels and Boot Camp are most definitely more effective solutions (at least as far as proper behavior of apps goes), but both require dropping some cash for a copy of Windows, which may be a bit much if there are only one or two Windows apps you need to run. At $60, CrossOver is still significantly cheaper than a copy of XP.

[amccabe]

That's true - if someone doesn't have XP installed on their Intel Mac and only needs to run a couple of Windows only apps, CrossOver is the way to go (as long as their apps run under it).

CrossOver also has the advantage of not having to wait for Windows to boot - and compared to Parallels, you don't have to sacrifice the resources of having the OS running.

But for resource-intensive apps (the ones that I use XP for), I doubt CrossOver is viable. The list of supported apps excludes them (specifically the Adobe Video Production Suite).

[amccabe]

I installed CrossOver to test out Internet Explorer 6 - I have to say that I was unimpressed. I have used IE6 under Wine for Linux and have never had too many problems with it, so I was surprised that CrossOver had so many problems. It has a built-in installer for IE6 and places it in a "bottle" to run under Windows 98 compatibility (as opposed to Windows 2000).

I cannot load adobe.com (I was attempting to get Flash Player 9 plug-in and possibly others). And quicktime.com crashes and quits the browser window. I also had a lot of hangs until I quit the browser and relaunched - even for simple pages such as google.

I was however, able to install flash player 9 via the active-X control. And CrossOver is only a free public beta at this point. I'm sure they will have IE6 running smoother before launch.

[dcv]

I installed CrossOver to test out Internet Explorer 6 - I have to say that I was unimpressed. I have used IE6 under Wine for Linux and have never had too many problems with it, so I was surprised that CrossOver had so many problems. It has a built-in installer for IE6 and places it in a "bottle" to run under Windows 98 compatibility (as opposed to Windows 2000).

I cannot load adobe.com (I was attempting to get Flash Player 9 plug-in and possibly others). And quicktime.com crashes and quits the browser window. I also had a lot of hangs until I quit the browser and relaunched - even for simple pages such as google.

I was however, able to install flash player 9 via the active-X control. And CrossOver is only a free public beta at this point. I'm sure they will have IE6 running smoother before launch.

Can you set it to run in Windows 2000/XP-compatible mode, as you can when running WINE on Linux? In Engadget's thread, I read that somebody did that and had IE6 running perfectly.

[amccabe]

I created a new bottle for Windows 2000 compatibility and IE6 hardly worked at all. So I tried XP and it was equally bad. I went to the Engadget page and read the first 50 posts. I saw people saying that they have the same problems as me - and it looks like Windows 98 is the default because that is what CrossOver reccommends.

[amccabe]

Last night, I was updating an html website on my macbook and I stumbled upon the obvious practical application of CrossOver and IE6 on Mac.

I was able to test the page in IE6 for Windows without booting into Windows. I actually did test it on an XP computer to make sure it was the same as the CrossOver version (but it was the same). I always test Firefox for Windows too, so hopefully they will add support for this soon.

[dcv]

Last night, I was updating an html website on my macbook and I stumbled upon the obvious practical application of CrossOver and IE6 on Mac.

I was able to test the page in IE6 for Windows without booting into Windows. I actually did test it on an XP computer to make sure it was the same as the CrossOver version (but it was the same). I always test Firefox for Windows too, so hopefully they will add support for this soon.

You should just try installing the Win32 version of Firefox anyway as an unsupported app - it works under WINE in linux perfectly (I use it whenever I want to view Flash 9 content in Linux since Flash for Linux is still stuck at version 7), so CrossOver should have no problem either.