WineBottler for OS X

Mac only: Wine has always been popular among Linux users for running Windows programs, but Wine is available for Mac, too and now, free utility WineBottler can "bottle" Windows programs into separate application bundles that run as standalone Mac apps.

To use WineBottler, just download a Windows EXE, then drag and drop it onto the WineBottler app. You can install them in a fake C: drive located by default in your home folder, just as you would on Linux, and run them from there easily. However, if you want to create a standalone application bundle (so that you can give a Windows program to a fellow Mac user, for example), WineBottler will create a separate bundle with Wine included inside, so your friend doesn't have to have Wine installed the app acts just like any other OS X app.

Note that just like in Linux, not all Windows programs work in Wine so you'll have to see for yourself if the program you want to convert is compatible. Notepad++ Portable, in the screenshot below, worked great.)

WineBottler is a free download, Mac OS X only.

WineBottler

Putty for Mac

$15.00

CodeWeavers CrossOver 9.0 coming soon

I thought I would give our readers the heads up about the soon to be released CrossOver 9.0. CodeWeavers CrossOver 9.0 is slated for launch sometime towards the end of January beginning of February 2010 and represents a major step forward for the CrossOver product. At this time no definite release date is scheduled, but it should be within the next month or so.

First, CrossOver 9.0 contains many fixes to existing applications, and just generally makes the product better. As of this writing CrossOver has been merged with Wine 1.1.34 and contains many improvements for Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office, Quicken, PhotoShop and many other supported and none supported applications.

Second, the folks at CodeWeavers have re-written the entire user interface from scratch, and have created what they feel is a more intuitive installation process and user experience. The new user interface is written in GTK and the look and feel is much more intuitive then the older Tcl/TK UI that was used before this upcoming release.

Third, and perhaps most important, the CrossOver installer will now be directly linked to our online Compatibility database and allow people to install unsupported software via (recipes) contained on the Compatibility Center.

This will make the product much easier to use for beginners if a recipe exists for an application, the Compatibility database will download the recipe and automatically install the users application for them. Likewise, CrossOver power users will be able to upload recipes to the Compatibility database to help other CrossOver users in the future. Taken together, this will offer CodeWeavers CrossOver customers a substantially better experience with the product.

Product pricing and availability is slated to remain the same as of the time of this writing.

Putty for Mac

$15.00

How to run Windows apps and games with Wine on OS X

There are many options for running Windows programs on the Mac. Boot Camp, for instance, is included with OS X for installing Windows on a separate partition. Parallels, VMware, and Sun offer virtualization software that let you run your Windows programs without logging out of OS X. And then there's Wine.

Wine is an Open Source application layer that runs within the Mac operating system rather than as a stand-alone, sandboxed operating system. The thing that all of these options, except Wine, have in common though is that they legally require you to actually run Windows and therefore own a Windows license. Wine, however, implements the Windows API allowing you to run Windows applications without actually running Windows.

David Baumgold has put together an excellent tutorial for setting up and using Wine on your Mac. The tutorial does a good job covering the pre-requisites, the actual installation, and then what to do with Wine once you have it installed. It should be noted that the installation of Wine is rather technical and should not be attempted by those unfamiliar with Terminal.app.

Once you get Wine up and running, you can install a myriad of different Windows applications from games to productivity apps (Office, anyone?). If you're curious about a particular program's compatibility with Wine, you can check out the AppDB for a list of applications and any issues present when running with Wine.

If you're interested in the technical benefits of Wine, you can also check out the excellent application Crossover, which is an easy-to-use port of Wine (pun intended) that makes it dead simple to get up and running with Wine.

Putty for Mac

$15.00