CodeWeavers Announces Lame Duck Support Insurance Policy

On Anniversary of Huge Software Giveaway, CodeWeavers Announces "It’s NOT Free" Special for Wednesday, October 28

 
In 2008 CodeWeavers Gave Away 650,000 Free Licenses in 24 Hours; This Year’s Special Includes "Lame Duck Insurance Policy" Offering 2-for-1 Support
 
SAINT PAUL, Minn. (October 27, 2009) – On the one-year anniversary of the software industry’s largest-ever one day giveaway—a publicity stunt that nearly crippled his company—Jeremy White, the deeply embittered CEO of CodeWeavers, announced ALL of his software will NOT be free tomorrow in celebration. "Not even CLOSE to free," White proclaimed in announcing his non-giveaway. "Still, we’ll have some pretty good deals."

Last Year: A Mushroom Cloud of New Users
The time was July, 2008. The plan: as part of CodeWeavers' "Great American Lame Duck Challenge," if President Bush could accomplish one of five goals by his term’s end – including reducing the price of gas to below $3 / gallon – CodeWeavers would give away its CrossOver software to anyone who wanted it. CrossOver is a highly-celebrated open source software that enables individuals to run Windows applications without purchasing a Windows license from Microsoft. And then, in mid-October 2008, as the global financial meltdown unfolded and the Great Recession kicked into fifth gear, gas hit $2.79 in the Twin Cities, and CodeWeavers announced that the giveaway was on.

The result was an internet phenomenon. On October 28, 2008, nearly 650,000 people downloaded CrossOver. "Our servers melted, my sales director was sobbing uncontrollably and we basically burned to the waterline," White said. "We were suddenly the hottest commodity on the Web after porn." One year later, though, White says he’s seen the light. "My socialist phase has passed; I’m back to being a greedy capitalist. It’s time for somebody to bail me out!"

This Year: CodeWeavers Actually Asks People to BUY Their Software
Wednesday, October 28, 2009, in a shocking, one-time-only shift away from its previous marketing stance, CodeWeavers has decided to try making money instead. For a 24-hour period commencing at midnight, October 28, CodeWeavers will offer ALL of its software for NOT free. "Half off, to be precise," intoned White. "But that’s still pretty darned good. No, we probably won't be moving as many licenses, but our servers won't be puddles of slag in the morning, either."

Users buying during the NOT free promotional period will automatically later receive CodeWeavers forthcoming "Zombie Mallard" and "Snow Mallard" releases, named in honor of the twisted Lame Duck that spawned them.

"Zombie Mallard" will allow CodeWeavers users CrossOver Games product to play Valve's fervently anticipated forthcoming Left 4 Dead 2 release, available in mid-November. "Snow Mallard," CodeWeavers next-generation productivity app, will allow users to install Windows applications directly from CodeWeavers huge online database of known software installation recipes.

"We think the Mallard releases will offer significant improvements to the way our current (non-paying) customers enjoy using CrossOver," White chuckled, then gagged from his stress-induced acid reflux. "A pity the Mallards won't QUITE be ready until after the Lame Ducker's 1-year support period has expired. That's just pure coincidence, though."

CodeWeavers Offering Assuring Insurance With Sale
White is also offering customers two further perks during this year’s "giveaway." First, they will receive the Lame Duck Insurance Policy.

"Starting Oct. 28th, for every day the customer waits for Snow Mallard to be released, we'll tack TwoWO days onto their support entitlements," White said from his desk, as he bent over and picked up a penny. "How’s that for a public option?

"It’s a pretty sweet deal: The later we ship, the more value the customer receives for their money. Not only that, but we're giving away 25 free lifetime licenses of CrossOver as well. That oughta pump up some interest; at least, that's what Marketing better hope," White muttered, in reference to his disgraced Marketing department, now chained to their desks until the company sells 650,000 PAID licenses. "Marketing got us into this mess in the first place; they ain't getting out of it until I say they’re out," White sneered. "Back to work, you!"

About CodeWeavers

Founded in 1996 as a general software consultancy, CodeWeavers today focuses on the development of Wine, the core technology found in all of its CrossOver products. The company's goal is to bring expanded market opportunities for Windows software developers by making it easier, faster and more painless to port Windows software to Mac OS X and Linux. CodeWeavers is recognized as a leader in open-source Windows porting technology, and maintains development offices in Minnesota, the UK and elsewhere around the world. The company is privately held. For more information about CodeWeavers, log on to www.codeweavers.com.

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Codeweavers honors the great Lame Duck giveaway

From Jeremy White's blog,

Wednesday the 28th is the one year anniversary of our Lame Duck giveaway special, in which we gave away 650,000 copies of CrossOver, melted down our servers, and destroyed the US economy.
We're choosing to celebrate the anniversary in a variety of ways. First, we're going to launch a 'CrossOver is NOT Free' promotion starting on Wednesday.

Next, in honor of the Lame Duck, we have given our next two upcoming releases code names. 'Snow Mallard' is the upcoming version of regular CrossOver and 'Zombie Mallard' is the upcoming version of CrossOver Games.


Snow Mallard represents a radical departure for us. For the first time, we're going to embrace the reality that CrossOver runs many applications, rather than just a limited number. Instead of a fixed number of applications supported by CrossOver, CrossOver will be able to use 'Application Installer Profiles', which can come from us, or from the broader community. This should make it easier for our Advocates to bake tips and tricks right into an installation recipe.

Snow Mallard also includes a complete rewrite of the client engine, so everyone, particularly Linux users, should see a dramatic improvement in behavior.

Zombie Mallard will continue to build on the great games we support now, and add support for Left 4 Dead 2, once it's available.

The marketing guys also tell me we'll have a new video out tomorrow, something to do about the Lame Duck as well. But they won't tell me what it is; some kind of surprise...

Cheers,
Jeremy

CodeWeavers CrossOver Mac Pro 8

Sometimes, what is possible it not always practical. Some users, such as those who absolutely must run a legacy Windows application, have found it's possible to load Windows on a Mac. Not for the faint of heart, the process involves booting into Windows--you'll need software such as Apple's Boot Camp (free)--or running Windows within a virtual machine application such as Parallels ( Macworld rated 3.5 out of 5 mice ) or VMware Fusion ( Macworld rated 4.5 out of 5 mice ).

A slicker option is CodeWeaver's CrossOver Mac Pro 8.0, an application that runs a virtual environment so you can run Windows applications on your Mac. (We tested the Pro version, which supports both apps and games.) With CrossOver 8 installed on your Mac, you can insert a Windows installer disc such as the one for Microsoft Office 2007 or Quicken 2009 for Windows, install the program, and run it without actually running Windows. This saves time, because you never have to boot the Windows OS. And, theoretically, it should make Windows apps run faster on your Mac.

CrossOver Mac Pro 8 is a smart application; it relies on the open-source Wine application for running Windows apps and streamlines the install process. However, since the CrossOver 7 ( Macworld rated 3 out of 5 mice ) release last year, the new version only adds support for one major, new Windows application (Quicken 2009) and tweaks Office 2007 compatibility. CodeWeavers has not addressed my chief complaint, which is that the application does not provide any guidance as to whether an application will work at the time of install, and relies instead on an online user forum. So, CrossOver 8 is smarter, but still not smart enough.

Application testing

Of course, the real strength of CrossOver 8 is whether it will work for the applications and games you want to run, not any interface issues. For example, I know of a design agency that still uses Adobe FrameMaker 7 to access an extensive archive of page layout documents. In some other cases, you might need to run a Windows program such as Microsoft Word 2007 because that's the version dictated by your company. Fortunately, CrossOver 8 has tweaked support for Office 2007 and now runs more reliably and faster, and adds support for features such as inserting clip art. That said, on my MacBook with 2GB of RAM and a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor, Office 2007 still crashed to the Desktop at least once per hour.

CrossOver 8 supports some of the more popular--but still not the very latest--PC games, such as Left4Dead. That game in particular is important because it ranks up there with World of Warcraft ( Macworld rated 5 out of 5 mice ) as a popular multiplayer game without a Mac version (yet). Left4Dead actually ran quite smoothly and even worked for a multiplayer co-op match.

I also tested Internet Explorer 7. After a few "dry runs" the app finally installed. Sites rich with ActiveX components, such as Live.com, ran quite well. Quicken 2009 never crashed, although parts of the program (such as the start-up screen) have noticeable graphical glitches. Accessing these apps is easy: CrossOver puts icons for Windows apps in a folder, a nice touch, and you can even drag them to the dock for easy access.

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VMare Fusion 3 Allows Even More Windows 3D Games To Run on Macs

Today VMware announced the latest release of its virtualization application for the Mac VMware Fusion 3. VMware Fusion allows Windows and Windows apps to be installed and run on Macs. While the release of the third official version of Fusion--with its "more than 50 new features"--might seemingly be meaningful to only a small group of Mac owners who need access to a handful of specific Windows applications, there is an aspect to this release that might have a much larger appeal to gamers: VMware Fusion 3 now includes DirectX 9.0c Shader Model 3 and OpenGL 2.1 support.

One of the reasons why the Mac hasn't had anywhere near the same market share as Windows systems is that the Mac has never really been considered a gaming system--at least not for games with high-level 3D graphics. (This is neither the primary nor the only reason--Mac OS licensing availability, or lack of it, has more to do with this than just about all other factors.) There are still far more 3D game options for Windows systems than there are for Macs; but ever since the Mac platform switched over to using Intel processors, a slowly-growing momentum has been building of Windows games being ported to the Mac--or Mac versions of Windows games being released around the same timeframe as their Windows counterparts.

Windows OS and Mac OS running at the same time with VMware Fusion 3

It is the switch to Intel processors that opened the door for another possibility for the Mac: to actually run the Windows OS on a Mac--either natively or via virtualization. If you run Windows natively on a Mac (via Apple's Boot Camp tool), then you get the full benefit of all the features the OS has to offer--such as DirectX 10 Shader Model 4 with Windows Vista, or DirectX 11 Shader Model 5 with Windows 7.

Another option the Intel processor brought to the table for the Mac is support for the Intel processor's integrated virtualization features. By using a virtual machine, the Windows OS can run on top of the Mac OS--giving you access to both operating systems at the same time. This is not a native solution, however, so the Windows OS will not behave precisely as it would if it was installed and run natively from its own partition--performance won't be quite as good and some features, such as full DirectX or OpenGL support, might not be enabled. That said, other than full 3D gaming support and a slight performance hit, the Windows OS experience via virtualization with the current application offerings should be almost identical to running the OS natively. Fusion even adds a number of features that help foster moving data back and forth between the Mac OS and Windows, as well as migrating a physical Windows system over to a virtual Windows Machine on a Mac.

VMware Fusion 3 supports Aero and Flip 3D

 

The previous version of VMware Fusion, as well as its primary competitor, Parallels Desktop 4.0 for Mac, include support for DirectX 9.0 Shader Model 2. Parallels also includes support for OpenGL 2, while VMware Fusion 2 didn't have OpenGL support. VMWare Fusion 3 ups the ante, however, by now including DirectX 9.0c Shader Model 3 and OpenGL 2.1 support. This won't be earth-shattering news to longtime Windows users, who are long-used to DirectX 10 and now DirectX 11; but it does at least update the Windows graphics capabilities of VMware Fusion from circa 2002 up to 2004. And it is important to note, that despite the existence of DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 (as well as OpenGL 3.2), the vast majority of 3D games out there are still DirectX 9 and 9.0c and OpenGL 2.0 and 2.1 titles--or at least Direct X 9 and 9.0c compatible (meaning that some graphics features are turned off when a DirectX 10 title is running in DirectX 9 or 9.0c mode). This means is that more Windows games will run on VMware Fusion, and many games will now have more quality settings supported by VMware Fusion.

Intel Macs owners actually have a number of other options for running Windows apps on their Macs. One is the free, open-source Wine project, and another is a commercial-implementation of Wine: CodeWeavers' CrossOver Mac. CodeWeavers also has a special version of CrossOver, made exclusively for running Windows games on the Mac: CrossOver Games. CrossOver Games currently supports DirectX 9 Shader Model 3 and OpenGL 3.x. Unfortunately, the Mac OS presently supports only up to OpenGL 2.1, so you won't be able to run any games that demand OpenGL 3.x. A CodeWeavers representative tells us that DirectX 10 Shader Model 4 support is currently in development and "will likely be ready next year."

There is a big caveat here that bears mentioning. Despite all this software support for DirectX and OpenGL, there is limited hardware support for these features on many of the Macs that are presently in owners' hands. Many iMacs and MacBooks have GPUs that simply lack the necessary support and horsepower for games that use DirectX 9 and above and OpenGL 2.1 and above. For instance, Apple has a matrix on its Developer site that shows the OpenGL support for the different GPUs found in its systems--some of the GPUs support only up to OpenGL 2.0, and one supports only up to OpenGL 1.4. As Apple embraces gaming more and more for the Mac platform, however, some higher-end GPU options have been slowly becoming available.

In addition to updating its 3D graphics support capabilities, VMware Fusion 3 also adds compatibility for Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) and officially supports Windows 7, including Windows Aero and Flip 3D. (VMware Fusion 2 identifies Windows 7 as Windows Vista, while Parallels 4's Windows 7 support is considered "experimental.") Starting today, VMware Fusion 3 is available for pre-orders from the VMware site, the Apple Online Store, and Amazon, for $79.99. VMware Fusion 3 will start shipping on October 27. On this date, users of previous versions of VMware Fusion can also upgrade to the new version for $39.99 via the VMware site.

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