Take all my following observations about Crossover as a review of their beta and not a final product. The one thing that gives Crossover a price edge though is that no Windows license at all is required. For instance, each application does not have a corresponding Dock icon. Those applications though do run right along side your Mac OS X applications and use far less memory than a Parallels install but still don’t look quite native due to the reliance on Crossover’s X11 server. Finally Crossover runs very few Windows programs at near full speed for CPU operations, though some 2D graphics operations in PowerPoint appear to be much slower than their Windows equivalents. Parallels, like Bootcamp, does require a Windows license though it could be an old cheap one instead of an expensive XP SP2 license. They do not however look like Mac OS X programs and all run inside a window that contains the entire Windows instance, but at least you can run Windows applications at the same time as Mac OS X applications. Parallels runs nearly all Windows programs that do not require 3D graphics with a reasonable performance hit. A Windows license for XPSP2 is also required. A reboot is currently required to get into Bootcamp so you can’t run Mac and Windows applications at the same time. Can run some 3D games.įirst lets imagine the perfect piece of software and see how these line up:ġ) Runs nearly all Windows programs at full speedĢ) Executes them as native Mac OS X applications without a containerīootcamp performs very well at 1) but fails utterly on points 2 and 3. Can pretend to be Win98, Win2000, or WinXP. Nearly any x86 OS.Ĭrossover Mac: Runs Windows software as native Mac OS X apps with emulation libraries in place of Microsoft libraries. A true Windows install but with only partial access to the hardware leading to poor 3D performance, slightly reduced CPU performance, and much lower disk performance. A true Windows install with full access to all the hardware and software though only Windows XP SP2 is currently supported.
After you have it installed, what can you do with it? First lets compare it with the other options:īootcamp: The real deal.
If you did not install X11 to your computer you will have to install a library (quartz-wm) from your Mac OS X install disk, it will guide you through the steps. Just download the DMG, mount it, and drag the Crossover application to your Applications directory. Installation of Crossover Mac couldn’t be simpler. Codeweavers has now released a beta of Crossover Mac which is a repackaging of WINE with additional compatibility modifications and more user friendly tools. Parallels vs. BootcampĪnother entrant has joined the race to capture the dollars of those who wish to run Windows software on their Intel Macs.
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