CrossOver Office for Intel Macs Enters Alpha

This is going to be awesome. I can't wait to try it out.

Where can I download it?

I think this is currently exclusive, so here's a great way to get the word out to everyone who might want to know :

http://digg.com/apple/CrossOver_Office_for...cs_Enters_Alpha

EDIT: I'm suprised people aren't excited by this, I guess Parallels has snuffed out most people's interest. Personally, I think CrossOver Office could be a nicer solution if they got Windows emulation working better.

quicken 2006 Home & Business still doesnt work on it. this is very alpha ware.

We've recently recieved word that CrossOver Office for Intel Macs has hit alpha 1, and has been made availible for limited public testing. It comes as a standard OS X package, and, while it requires X11, it appears that CodeWeavers is working to eliminate this dependency. After installation, users simply click on a Windows .exe file to launch it. CrossOver Office has a sort of start menu which resembles it's Windows counter-part, allowing users to easily launch installed Windows software. Reportedly, CrossOver Office will also support the creation of a Macintosh application wrapper of sorts. This allows for Windows programs to appear in your standard Applications window. While games aren't working well yet, it seems that Office applications are fairly functional. Half-Life 2 also appears to be a development support priority. Rounding it out, cut and paste sharing, as well as Windows applications on the dock, appear to work. While this software is still alpha and obviously experiences it's share of crashes and kernel panics, this strong feature list is very promising. More details as we have them...

I hope I read this right.. it lets you use Windows programs inside of OS X?

I hope I read this right.. it lets you use Windows programs inside of OS X?

That would be correct.

I've used it in Linux before. It works alright. I managed to get Office 2000, WMP 6, and Quicktime installed. I'm not sure how well it will run in Mac though...

sweet.

that is all.

will this be easier to use than darwine?

will this be easier to use than darwine?

It is wine with extra compatibility patches.

i'm excited all over the place! if they do as good a job with osX as they did for linux, it'll be great.

there probably aren't as many responses as usual, cause most people here haven't used it in linux. secondly there is very little a person can add to the thread, but say, "i'm excited all over the place!"

This is pretty cool. But what does it mean for Microsoft Windows?? Nobody will want to even buy a PC anymore. The Windows OS will soon die because nobody wants to pay its ridiculously price. Not saying that buying an Apple computer is cheap. Maybe everybody will just buy hackintosh systems from now on. Apple is clinging on to their monopoly while they could be making money just selling MAC to everybody. I mean afterall Bill Gates was the richest person in the world for over a decade.

Nobody will want to even buy a PC anymore.

Exactly...

This is pretty cool. But what does it mean for Microsoft Windows?? Nobody will want to even buy a PC anymore. The Windows OS will soon die because nobody wants to pay its ridiculously price. Not saying that buying an Apple computer is cheap. Maybe everybody will just buy hackintosh systems from now on. Apple is clinging on to their monopoly while they could be making money just selling MAC to everybody. I mean afterall Bill Gates was the richest person in the world for over a decade.

Arg arg it's not MAC it's just Mac.

Everyone will still buy PCs because the average joe/jane thinks that it's a "bargain", Dells can go as low as $300, the lowest Mac cost $600.

Everyone won't buy Hackintoshes because not everyone is tach savvy (the average jane/joe).

Hahahaha I just realized your name is avarage_joe!

It will be nice if there are something like Cedega for example

Sounds good to me...as long as they get good game support...*cough cough* counter-strike *cough cough*, ill be satisfied.

Is it possibly for us to download it somewhere to take a look at it?

I notice that Adobe Photoshop is listed as a supported application for the linux version. That might make a lot of intelmac owners very happy while they wait for UB versions for OSX...

this still does emulate munky, so photoshop might run a little better, but not a huge amount. I have used Cross Over office with photoshop 7 on linux and it worked, ok.

BTW, one thing I love about wine is that you can change the colors, you don't have to keep the default ugly grey, I changed mine in darwine to a lighty grey color to make it match better.

great i would remove this darwine emulation

i hope we gonna have it for the next week

I notice that Adobe Photoshop is listed as a supported application for the linux version. That might make a lot of intelmac owners very happy while they wait for UB versions for OSX...

Most likely the pro users are still using the MDD G4's for Photoshop. Because Adobe optimized that noe for Altivec, the G4's just maul Photoshop.

Most likely Mactel users are using GIMP or Graphic Converter, both of which seem to have good performance across the Mac board. Adobe is most likely going to lose a lot of a possible consumer base (the Mactel market) with its slow transition to universal programs. On the bright side, it gives Adobe a chance to do it right without a hack patch (which was the case when the G5 towers first came out).

Most likely the pro users are still using the MDD G4's for Photoshop. Because Adobe optimized that noe for Altivec, the G4's just maul Photoshop.

 

Most likely Mactel users are using GIMP or Graphic Converter, both of which seem to have good performance across the Mac board. Adobe is most likely going to lose a lot of a possible consumer base (the Mactel market) with its slow transition to universal programs. On the bright side, it gives Adobe a chance to do it right without a hack patch (which was the case when the G5 towers first came out).

I don't think Adobe will lose consumer base, as there is no actual competitor on the Mac. Businesses who have spent their last twenty years relying on Photoshop for Mac are not about to jump ship to the GIMP

Most design houses I know are just moving up from dual G4s to G5s now for workflow, it will be another couple of years before they upgrade to Intel (unless of course they want a dual booting machine).

It'd be good to see Cedega on OSX (same company isnt it?)

The Adobe CS2 products not working so badly on INTEL Macs. Photoshop and Illustrator CS2 working relatively well, Indesign and Acrobat CS2 take some long time till launching, than working so well. For viewing pdfs I still recommend Preview, instead of Acrobat CS2.

In my opinion Apple should either buy or work closely with Codeweavers. With their emulation support Macs will be able to run a wide range of software.

1.- Macintosh PPC / Universal / Intel software.

2.- Linux / FreeBSD OSS applications (such as Gimp), and others through Darwin Ports, Fink.

3.- Windows Apps through CrossOver / Darwine.

Along with running Windows applications, devleopers can use the work done in CrossOver / Darwine to port their applications from Windows by compiling the app with the winlib.dll.

The most frustrating thing as a Mac user in the past was the lack of software -- now the tables are turning.

the X11 requirement is only days/weeks from being fixed - the was a post on the darwine-devel mailing list this week with a patch for a quartz video driver that apparently works very well. once this quartz output works 100% darwine should work with just as many apps/games as wine on linux (as the current problem with darwine is the lack of a root x-window in Apple's xserver).

oh and crossover office for os x is wine/darwine with a pretty launcher (basically) - so once the quartz driver is done just download wine and compile it - instant windows .exe support! yay!

Any news on quartzdrv now? Has anyone tried to compile a binary so that we lesser mortals can see what it's like?