If you’ll recall, CodeWeavers’ CrossOver is software that emulates a Windows environment, and is based on the WINE project. Keep in mind that it’s not a Virtual Machine (VM) like Parallels Desktop or VMWare Fusion. It is a fairly seamless method of running certain Windows-based software under Mac OS X and Linux.

Those Mac users looking to upgrade to Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, if they haven’t already done so, should pay particular attention. Those looking to upgrade from CrossOver 9.2 should also be aware of this release, as it pertains to them.

* Fixed several known issues with the upcoming Mac OS 10.7 Lion.
* Fixed the Guild Wars footstep bug.
* Updated several built-in CrossTies. (These upgrades have been available online for a while.)
* Improved the MojoSetup (.bin installer) upgrade path.
* Added a progress dialog during initial open of a CrossTie on the Mac.
* Added support for the ‘installer’ keyword which supports CrossTies for stand-alone executables.
* Added RAR support to CrossTie installation.
* Added a ‘recreate’ button to the menus control panel.
* Fixed some menu issues on the upgrade path from CrossOver 9.2.
* Added a means to turn off requesting a stable OpenGL back buffer. Set CX_NO_GL_BACKING_STORE in the environment to enable.

Downloading CrossOver Games for Mac:
* New users: Trial Download/Update
* Existing users: My Downloads page

CrossOver Games 10.1.1 fixes “several known issues” with Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. It also fixes a problem with Guild Wars.

Those CrossOver 9.2 users take note – some issues with upgraded to CrossOver Games 10.x have been resolved.

Updates and Fixes
* Fixed several known issues with the upcoming Mac OS 10.7 Lion.
* Fixed the Guild Wars footstep bug.
* Updated several built-in CrossTies. (These upgrades have been available online for a while.)
* Improved the MojoSetup (.bin installer) upgrade path.
* Added a progress dialog during initial open of a CrossTie on the Mac.
* Added support for the ‘installer’ keyword which supports CrossTies for stand-alone executables.
* Added RAR support to CrossTie installation.
* Added a ‘recreate’ button to the menus control panel.
* Fixed some menu issues on the upgrade path from CrossOver 9.2.
* Added a means to turn off requesting a stable OpenGL back buffer. Set CX_NO_GL_BACKING_STORE in the environment to enable.

Downloads:
* Trial Download/Update
* Downloads page (Existing Users)

CrossOver is an environment/Windows emulator of sorts, based on WINE. It’s not a full Virtual Machine (VM) environment and it’s not quite a emulator. It allows you to run Windows software without the need for a Windows OS, and it does so seamlessly within Mac OS X.

10.0.3 is mainly minor improvements, including areas dealing with upgrading/installing applications, and upgrading from an older version of CrossOver

Straight from the changelog:
* Fixed an installation issue with Project 2007 which produced a ‘Not installed for the Current User’ error message.
* Updated several built-in CrossTies. (These upgrades have been available online for a while.)
* Improved the MojoSetup (.bin installer) upgrade path.
* Added a progress dialog during initial open of a CrossTie on the Mac.
* Added support for the ‘installer’ keyword which supports CrossTies for stand-alone executables.
* Added RAR support to CrossTie installation.
* Added a ‘recreate’ button to the menus control panel.
* Fixed some menu issues on the upgrade path from CrossOver 9.2.

Download/Update
* If you have CrossOver, you can go into the help menu and “Check for Updates…”
* New users: Trial Download/Update
* Existing users: My Downloads page

Mac OS X fans who wanted to play Rift will be happy to know that this officially supports the installation and playing of Rift. Also, World of Warcraft fans can install through the download client, although to be honest, there is already a Mac OS X client for World of Warcraft available. Still, it’s another option and there are definitely reasons to support it.

New games support:
* Rift now installs and runs.

Other changes:
* Added the ability to install World of Warcraft via the download client. There are some issues with the launcher, but the game runs well when launched via WoW.exe.
* Some improvements have been made to the Star Trek Online launcher. The game still suffers from performance problems.
* Added CrossTie support for RAR files.
* Made several improvements to menu and association handling.

Download for new users: Trial Download/Update
Download for existing users: Downloads page

Excerpt:

At CodeWeavers, we believe strongly in truth in advertising. This section is an honest appraisal of what CrossOver Mac can and cannot do, written after review of our own testing and what our testers have found. Hopefully this will help you to determine whether or not CrossOver is for you.

Just the Highlights:

* 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.

Rest of the article

From the CrossOver Mac 6.0 team:

From Jeremy White’s posting in the CrossOver Mac forums:

I’m happy to say that we’ve now made a public prerelease version of CrossOver Mac 6.0 available for your testing pleasure. A summary list of changes is available below.

At this point, we feel we’re finally beginning to converge on a final 6.0. We still have some major issues we hope to solve, mostly with programs like Quicken 2007.

However, we hope this build brings a lot of joy, particularly in fixes for service packs, Outlook 2003, Quicken versions prior to 2007, and with some Half Life 2 fixes.

We’re also hoping to confirm that we’ve made progress on non US locales, particularly European and Japanese environments, which should now be working reasonably well.

Major issues we will continue to work on are around Quicken 2007, and just general polish and clean up of a variety of applications (e.g. End Note and others).

I’m particularly interested in Outlook 2003 use in Exchange environments. In all of our testing, this seems to be working pretty well. I’d really appreciate test reports on your experiences with it.

At any rate, thanks for your interest and help. We’ll be watching the beta reports and forums more closely, please direct your feedback there.

Cheers,
Jeremy
—–

* CrossOver Mac 6.0.0beta3 Fixes
- Improved CD-handling: Now CrossOver should be able to detect and interact with all removable volumes and dynamically assign
drive letters to then. The ‘eject’ button should work better as well. All in all, multi-CD installs should work much better.
- Rearranged the panels in the Bottle Manager; added a bottle description field.
- Changed the GUI feedback during the deletion of a bottle.
- Fixed icons in the control-panel.
- Improved locale support — now the Windows locale should match the OS X locale.
- Fixed a few keymapping problems. Shift-arrow selection should now work properly, and non-US keyboards may work better.
- Added default association handling so that .pdfs and such arepassed to the system for opening.
- Fixed an occasional crash in Half-Life.
- Redesign of menu and Applications/CrossOver handling.
- Menus should now vanish when applications are removed.
- Added the first part of a User Guide.
- Partial redesign of the Bottle Manager dialog

General CrossOver fixes and improvements:
- Fixed network play in Half-Life 1.
- Fixed a bug with window sizing in Quicken
- Fixed problems with some Quicken versions that cause windows to become non-responsive.
- Fixed several issues with the connection between Outlook and Exchange.
- Office 2003 service packs can now be installed.
- Slipstream editions of Office 2003 can now be installed.
- Fixed popup menus in Photoshop

You can download it here.

Announcement at crossover.codewavers.com:

Hi Folks,

I am happy to announce that we have put up a new version of our public beta of CrossOver Mac as well as an equivalent public beta of CrossOver Linux.

For Mac users, this release includes fixes to Internet Explorer, fixes for many cases where programs would crash when run (e.g. Microsoft Office 2000 and similar older applications), fixes for Outlook 2003, and a range of other improvements.

Please note that this is still beta software, and there are many issues remaining; we still have a ways to go until we feel comfortable considering it ready for release. While we greatly appreciate feedback on this release, if you don’t like bleeding edge experimental software, we’d really rather you waited for a proper production version.

Along those lines, please read the Forums on our beta center; we will be posting errata and troubleshooting tips there, as well as paying careful
attention to your reports. There will be no support for this release through our normal ticket system, so please direct all questions and reports to our beta center.

At any rate, you can download the software from our beta center: www.codeweavers.com/beta/

Please report your experiences with the software to the beta center, and thanks for your interest in CrossOver and Wine!

Cheers,

Jeremy White
CEO
CodeWeavers
————– next part ————–
* CrossOver Mac 6.0.0beta2 – 2006/09/28

CrossOver Mac specific changes:
Dramatic performance improvements — startup time, bottle creation and a few install processes should be much faster.
Fixed switching to full-screen mode so the screen does not go all black.
Fixed bugs on case-sensitive file systems.
Fixed the CPU detection, which makes many installers happier.
Fixed problems that appeared when old PPC tcl libraries were migrated from an old Mac.
Fixed failure to see the second and subsequent font faces in a font suitcase file.
Fixed failure to launch Programs menu items and menu helper applications if CrossOver.app has moved (only fixed for newly installed Windows programs).
Added an option on the Run Command dialog to create a custom launch icon.
Made applet launching simpler in the Bottle Control Panel.
Made the Open Shell feature more reliable and useful.
Fixed a bug in the registration process.

Application fixes:
Fixed a freeze in Internet Explorer when accessing Windows Update.
Much better support for Outlook 2003 and other Office 2003 applications.
Improved OLE embedding support for Office 2003 applications.
Fixed DCOM detection for Office XP. Should dramatically improve behavior of Office XP applications.
Fixed font detection in Visio 2003.
Many improvements to game support. Should install and run World of Warcraft and Half-life via Steam.

General CrossOver fixes and improvements:
Fixed the windows version setting in WinXP bottles.
Added a few entries to the Bottle Control Panel.
Added GIF support that was missing for some apps.

CodeWeavers has announced plans to release CrossOver Mac this summer. The $60 software will allow Intel Mac users to run Windows applications – including some games – without having to buy or install Windows itself.

Boot Camp and Parallels Desktop both provide this capability for Intel Mac owners already. Boot Camp, software from Apple currently available in beta form, makes users reboot their Macs and run Windows. Parallels Desktop iis a ‘virtualisation’ utility that enables the Windows operating system and Windows applications to run in Mac OS X, within another window (or, alternately, in full screen mode).

CrossOver Mac will take this one step further – it eschews what CodeWeavers chief operating officer Jon Parshall calls the “box within a box approach”.

“What you see running is an application sitting in your Dock or your Applications folder,” Parshall said.

Both Boot Camp and Parallels Desktop work because the new Macs utilise the same microprocessor that’s found in Windows-compatible computer, and CrossOver Mac employs the same basic principle. This wasn’t possible before January, when Macs depended solely on PowerPC-based microprocessors made by IBM and Freescale. The presence of an Intel processor inside the Mac forges a close enough resemblance to get Windows and Windows applications to work.

Full article.