CrossOver Mac 16
An easy way to run Windows software on your Mac
CrossOver has always sold itself as a more userfriendly front end for Wine
£25-£38 FROM Codeweavers, codeweavers.com needs OS X 10.8 or later, optical drive for some programs
Running Windows apps or games on your Mac can be hard work, but CrossOver offers an elegant,
affordable solution. You don’t need to buy a copy of Windows, and you don’t need the hassle of setting up Bootcamp or a full-blown virtual machine just to run one program.
CrossOver is based on the open-source Wine project. You basically install Windows programs into self-contained “bottles”, which run a skeletal version of Windows – from 98 up to Windows 10. These contain the bare minimum required to run the program in question – there’s no underlying desktop environment, for example; instead bottles can simply be accessed and run direct from your Mac desktop as if they were native apps.
The downside is that CrossOver isn’t guaranteed to work with all programs – and even those that are supported can be buggy, crashing when you try specific tasks or not behaving as you’d expect. This is why trying the 14-day trial before purchase is essential. If it’s a commercial title, you’ll probably need to provide the original installer disc (Remote Disc works well if required). If an app isn’t listed, that doesn’t mean it won’t work; many haven’t yet been tested, while others require a bit of work (although they may not work that well).
You can create your own bottles from scratch, add required pre-requisites (such as the .NET Framework) and then attempt to install apps yourself. You can tweak your bottles too, to try to improve performance, boost compatibility or simply integrate it better into your Mac desktop.
Beyond the basics
This version updates CrossOver’s underlying engine to Wine 2.0, and introduces support for Office 2013 and 64-bit bottles – the latter should boost performance and compatibility of the app going forward.
CrossOver has always sold itself as a more user-friendly front end for Wine, and changes introduced in version 15 mean it succeeds admirably: a redesigned assistant makes verifying and installing any of the 13,000 compatible programs in its database as easy as possible, and there’s also a much-improved bottle management page for viewing, launching and editing your Windows apps.
CrossOver will ultimately be judged on its results, and we find it the most elegant solution for integrating old Windows apps and games into your Mac (providing you can get them working). We recommend you pay a bit extra for the £38 package, which comes with one year’s free updates and support, in which time more Windows apps should become compatible. At this price, it’s a steal.