CrossOver for Mac

I had a chat with Jon Parshall, Chief Operating Officer of CodeWeavers, about their marvelous product CrossOver for Mac. Based on Wine, CrossOver allows Windows applications (including games) to run under Mac and Linux without Windows. In contrast to solutions like VMWare and Parallels that use an installed, genuine version of Windows, CrossOver is an implementation of the technologies in Windows. CrossOver doesn’t load a second operating system alongside your current operating system, just what is needed to make a program work.

Even better, CodeWeavers are completely realistic about their aim and implementation of CrossOver:

CrossOver Mac is a product with amazing promise. You can install Windows software easily, the program launchers should appear in the finder, it integrates nicely with the file system, it can run any type of program, including games and other complex software. And all of this without having to buy or run a copy of Windows.

The catch is that CrossOver doesn’t run every Windows program, and some programs that do run, run with flaws.

However, CrossOver does work very well for many people, so it is always worth a try. And when you do run into a problem, we have many excellent systems to help you triage that problem, including our compatibility center and our support systems.

I’ve been using CrossOver to run games like Half Life 2 and Max Payne 2 and the experience so far has been excellent. More on that soon…

TMG: Why use CrossOver when WINE is available?

Jon: Reason 1: Because on a day-to-day basis you never know what you’re getting with Wine.  Some developer may have introduced a patch yesterday that fixes a glaring bug in Team Fortress 2 but ends up breaking all the MSOffice applications.  If you are an Outlook user, you’re screwed until someone (most likely us) introduces a patch that will fix it.  If you buy CrossOver, on the other hand, you *know* that the applications we say work, will work.  Reason 2: We support you.  If you have an issue installing or configuring CrossOver, or getting a supported application to work, we will help you.  If you have the same problem with free Wine, you will have to use the Wine user forums, and your mileage may vary, particularly if you don’t have the technical moxie to interpret the answer that the geeks give you.

TMG: How has platform agnostic development progressed in the last ten years?

Jon: Hmmmmm.  That’s a tough one to answer.  My overall sense is that until very recently we’ve been living in an almost completely Windows-centric software world as far as the desktop is concerned.  It is only with the recent success of the Mac platform, having essentially re-invented itself on the Intel platform, that you’ve seen a wedge being driven into that paradigm.  Even with that, there hasn’t been an explosion of ISVs looking to deploy a Mac version of their software, at least not yet.  And what *we* do, of course, is make it possible to adapt a Windows app for the Mac without having to do a native re-write.  Have we seen an uptick in that OEM business to the Mac?  Absolutely.  No question.  Has it been a veritable flood of new business?  Not yet.  We think, though, that we can grow that end of our business aggressively–the Mac space is hot at the moment.

On the Linux side of things, there are still opportunities in that space as well, but most of them are in developing nations such as South Africa, India, and Brazil.  As far as I can tell, there are very few companies developing commercial software for Linux.  Of course, there is a *lot* of open-source software out there for that platform, and some of it is very sophisticated.

TMG: Could developers do more to ease the transition from a Windows centric universe to a more open one?

Jon: Working with Wine from the start, and testing their applications against Wine from the get-go is a good general principle.  Avoiding .Net as much as possible is another.  However, we realize that the latter isn’t always possible, or even feasible–if you’re writing Windows software, you’ve already placed yourself in a Microsoft-centric development environment.

TMG: What are the differences and advantages between supporting Mac and Linux versions of CrossOver?

From our end?  Practically no differences, really.  If an application runs on CrossOver Mac, it typically will also run on CrossOver Linux.  Wine is, by and large, agnostic as to the platform it’s running on. There are exceptions to this rule, of course, but in 90% of cases, it holds true.

TMG: Could anything be improved on the Mac that would improve the implementation of CrossOver?

Jon: We’ve run into occasional issues with the Mac OS that temporarily hinder Wine development, but in general we’ve found it to be a good platform for Wine development.

TMG: Would you like support from Apple with CrossOver?

Jon: We have a very cordial and productive relationship with Apple’s OS group, and have found them to be generally responsive to our needs.  Do I wish that from a business standpoint that Apple would push our product over other emulation solutions that require buying an actual copy of Windows?  Sure, because I think that we are far and away a cleaner solution *and* we don’t drive Apple’s customers towards using the other guy’s OS.  On the other hand, I understand that Apple has a certain level of ambivalence about what we do–we make it easier to run Windows software on a Mac.  What Apple would prefer, of course, is to have software developers write specifically for the Mac and be a part of their developer program.  Whether that’s a realistic expectation on Apple’s part remains to be seen.  I personally think that Wine is going to be an increasingly important part of any ISV’s cross-platform toolkit.  But I don’t know that Apple is going to necessarily view what we do as some sort of strategic imperative.

TMG: How do you see CrossOver for Mac progressing?

Jon: We’ll continue to support more Windows applications, and continue trying to meet the specific needs of our Mac customers.  Sorry, that’s a kinda lame answer, but we’re a bit different from most software applications in that we don’t have a lot of “features” in a classic sense.  Our reason for existence is to run *other* people’s software.  We’ll continue trying to make that happen for as many applications as possible.

TMG: Not at all, I think it’s great that you’re focused on continual improvement versus new shiny features. Is it a never ending struggle to support games?

Jon: Yup. And every new version of MSOffice that comes out, etc.  There’s always something new that we need to support, and we’re always playing catch up.

TMG: In an ideal world, where will CrossOver be in five years? Is it impossible to say?

Jon: In an ideal world, with the proper financial backing, we could make Wine what it promises to be–a magic silver bullet that runs essentially *everything*, right out of the box. That’s the goal, at any rate.

TMG: Tell us a little bit about your relationship with the open-source community.

Jon: It’s very strong.  We’ve always tried very hard to play by the rules of the larger community.  *ALL* of our Wine work goes back to Wine.  And we’ve done Wine development on problems knowing that when we introduced a given patch, that we would perhaps be hurting ourselves from a business sense, but that what we were doing was the best thing for Wine.  We’ve never shied away from doing what’s right for Wine.  We believe that in so doing we’ll reap rewards down the line as Wine becomes a more versatile, capable, and general purpose tool.

TMG: What do you think about Transgaming’s Cider technology?

We think it’s fine.  We wish, however, that they gave their work back to the Wine community.

TMG: Do you game? If yes, what do you play?

Jon: I have long been a turn-based strategy gamer.  Civilization, Alpha-Centauri, Heroes of Might and Magic, Master of Orion, Hearts of Iron, etc.  Sadly, however, for the past two years I’ve mostly been playing World of Warcraft.  I have four level 70s on the Aerie Peak realm.  Fortunately, I am about to start writing my second book, so I’m hoping that will cut into my playing time some.  ;-)

TMG: I’m a recovering World of Warcraft user. I find it hilarious that most WoW users apologise for their gaming and secretly know it’s a waste of time…

Jon: I’m kind of a weird mixture of really compulsive and really cynical at the same time.  And I tend to play games with a commerce angle in mind.  So, I’m *really* good at making money.  Four 70s, four elite flying mounts, three netherdrakes, and seven digits socked away in the bank.  All my ‘toons have interlocking gathering skills and professions, and I’m basically this little economic oligarchy.  Which sounds great, except that it has some serious negative effects as well.  I can never start a Horde ‘toon, or start new ‘toons on new servers, because I refuse to level a new character without the benefit of that sort of massive logistical backup.  Being poor sucks.  Heh.  All my ‘toons except my first were trust-fund babies, lol.

What I find equally hilarious is people that switch guilds so that they can “see new content.”  I’m like, dudes, it’s not like you’re going to see, say, Istanbul.  Black Temple is just pixels on your screen; the figment of a server’s imagination somewhere in Los Angeles.  New content: meh.

TMG: What Macs do you guys use?

We have a mixture of iMacs, and Powerbooks.  I have a 17″ Powerbook myself.  I ran Ubuntu Linux for several years prior, and I have to say I’m quite happy with the Mac.