Crossover Macintosh

By Ted Bade

CodeWeaver’s Crossover Macintosh is yet another means of running Windows applications on your Intel Macintosh. What makes it stand apart from the other players in this field it that you don’t need to acquire a copy of the Windows operating system to run an application. The Crossover application takes care of that. What you do need to do is have a copy of the application(s) you want to run. While this is an excellent solution, not every application written for Windows will work with Crossover Macintosh. But it is an excellent solution and there are many applications that have been tested to work with it.

There are now three solutions for Intel Mac users for running non-MacOS X operating systems on their Macs. The first is Apple’s own solution called BootCamp, which allows one to reboot their Mac as if it were a PC and run XP and probably Vista. This solution is free although you need to buy a copy of Windows that will work. However, using Bootcamp requires that your reboot into Windows, which is a bother, since this limits one’s ability to immediately share data from one platform to another. The other two solutions allow you to run Windows based applications concurrently with MacOS X. We already did a full review of Parallels for MacOS X, which also requires a copy of Windows (and an expensive copy, if you plan to run Vista). Today we are going to look at the new kids on this (Macintosh) block, called Crossover Macintosh produced by CodeWeavers.

Getting Started
Crossover Macintosh is based on a solution that has been in use by the PC Linux community for a while now, called Wine. (to learn more about Wine and what it means visit: http://winehq.org/site/about). What Crossover Macintosh does is provide the aspects of running Windows that an application needs, without the user needing to buy Windows. Think about it, if this solution will work for you, you won’t have to plop down anywhere from $200 - $400 for a copy of Windows! That fact alone is worth making one take a serious look at Crossover Macintosh.

I won’t go into the technical details of how this works. Since the Macintosh has an Intel processor and the application was written to run on an Intel based CPU, the only thing that is missing are a few (or perhaps several), calls to the Windows OS for some basic routines, such as fonts, window spaces, mouse controls and so forth. Crossover looks at what this application needs and provides code that fills in the gaps. So now, with Crossover Macintosh installed, you can click on the (Windows) icon of say, Internet Explorer, and see it run on your Macintosh. You will know it is the Windows version because the fonts will be harsh and scraggly, and the menus will be those of Windows.

Even the process of installing an application dips you into the world of Windows. You will have to go through all the agreements, warnings, and decisions that anyone accustomed to installing any Windows application are familiar with! You will be shocked and amazed as you watch your Macintosh pretend to be a Window’s machine. Truly, it is an eerie sensation to see this!

Installing applications with Crossover Macintosh is relatively simple. To do this review I searched through the lengthy list of possible applications
(http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/cat) and selected several titles that I was interested in. You will need the official CDs for commercial applications. There are several free programs (such as Internet Explorer) and some applications, which have limited demos that you can download to try. The first application I choose to play with was Internet Explorer, version 6 that never made it to the MacOS platform.

To begin the installation I had to select to install a new application from the Crossover Mac menu. Since this was the first application I had installed, Crossover Macintosh had some work it had to do to make things work. It first creates a “bottle” to contain the Windows workspace and the application. The concept of the bottle comes from the roots of this program. The original open source project was called Wine. So they carry forward the concept of creating a bottle (wine bottle) to fill up! Cute.

You can have multiple bottles in Crossover Macintosh. For instance you can create a bottle for an application that requires Win98 (one that wouldn’t work in XP) and another for all applications that work well with XP. They recommend that you create a separate bottle if you choose to try an application that they haven’t certified yet. However, you can have several applications in one bottle. Consider the bottle as a memory compartment, where the alien application and all the stuff it needs, is isolated from the rest of the applications on your machine.

Once the bottle has been created, the installation can begin. Crossover Macintosh prompts you to choose an application from the list to install. There are a lot of choices on this list. If the application you want to run is not on this list, you can choose to install an unsupported application. Let’s stay with my example and choose to install IE6.

The next step in the installation process is to tell Crossover Macintosh where the installer resides. There are three choices here. This could be from a CD, an Internet site, or an installer file that is on your Macintosh. In the case of my example, IE6 is available over the Internet. Since it is a free program, the Crossover Macintosh application knows the location of a valid installer file. You then choose to download the installer via your Internet connection. The file will flow into your computer.

Once the installer file is downloaded, Crossover Macintosh will run the installer and the fun begins! You will recognize the various messages and windows that occur during a standard Windows application installation. When the installation process is complete, Crossover Macintosh tells you it is going to simulate a Windows reboot, which it does. Now the application you have installed is available to be used.

You’ll find that during the installation process, Crossover Macintosh has created a folder called Crossover in your account’s personal “Application” folder. Inside this folder you will find the icons for the applications you have installed. In the future, if you want to run one of these applications, you just double click on it’s icon; this will call up Crossover Macintosh and all the stuff the application needs to run. You can even keep the icon for the Window’s application in you dock. It’s pretty cool.

The installation process is similar if you install from a CD or a file on your computer. You just tell the program where the installer file is located and it runs it. Once Crossover Macintosh is installed, if you insert a Windows CD it will recognize it and install the application. Unless you are a real pro, it’s probably a good idea to accept all the defaults during the installation process.

While you can run an application that has not been tested, your results might be mixed. The CodeWeaver’s people are constantly qualifying new applications to work with Crossover Macintosh, but their time is limited. To this end, they have a couple of methods to let the user get involved with getting an application working. First of all you can make a pledge. That is you can say, I will definitely buy the program or here is some money, so please do it. You can volunteer to help with the qualification process for a favorite application as well. Finally, if you are an owner, you can vote on applications to show your level of interest.

The people at CodeWeavers qualify those applications they believe are the most valuable to users and potential users. Their choices are based on information they get from users. While I was speaking with them, I mentioned that I was interested in Window Media Player, since this would open Window’s DRM for media files to Mac users. Although this had come up before, they had never really considered Windows Media Player, since there are solutions that run natively for the Macintosh, but of course these solutions don’t include access to DRM files. I am hoping we see Window Media Player 11 qualified in the near future!

Probably the biggest issue of using Crossover Macintosh is whether or not the application or applications you need to run are already qualified to work. If you have moved from Windows to Mac OS and have only a couple of very popular applications that you need to run then you might be in luck. However, if you just want to try out a variety of Window’s Applications because your Mac gives you the ability, it won’t be the solution for you.

I had absolutely no problem running any of the qualified applications I choose to try with Crossover Macintosh. Of course, I stuck with those qualified to the highest level. So I can say that when it works, it works very well. They maintain a list of applications people are interested in. If users have tried them they can post comments to tell other users if it worked or not. The web site shows almost 3000 applications, including those that have been qualified.

Conclusion
Crossover Macintosh is a good product. It is the least costly of all the solutions for using Windows on a Macintosh because you don’t need to buy a copy of Windows. I recommend that you look over the list of applications you want to run before you decide to buy this program. Of course, if you are like a lot of people who would rather not support Microsoft in any way, this is the route to go, even if one application you need to run isn’t currently supported. If that is important to you, you will probably be willing to wait and even add your support to this project. Frankly, I think feel that non-supporting Windows is a good thing!

Recommendation
I recommend Crossover Macintosh for anyone with an Intel Mac that needs to run a couple of Window’s applications. Just be sure to review the list of working applications before you buy. As a matter of fact, you can download a 30-day trial version and try your application before you actually buy Crossover Macintosh, what more could you ask for?