Archive for November 6th, 2008

It’s been just over 2 months since the release of Google’s Chrome web-browser (released September 2) (links about Chrome: Google’s Chrome page: Wikipedia.org Chrome page: my posts about chrome). Since then there has been a way for mac and linux users to sign up for more information because Googles claimed it’s “still in development”. And all I can say is that Chrome is the best browser I’ve ever used since, Safari back in 2002. So, if you’re a mac user like me, there are some options to get your fill of Chrome:

Wait for the native mac version
Use Parallels or VMWare Fusion to use Windows virtually on your mac
Reboot everytime you want to go online into Windows and use Chrome
Use CrossOver Chromium

(Codeweavers) CrossOver is a company made famous for it’s “no Windows required” product that allows mac and linux users to run Windows applications on their computerss by duplicating the Win32 API. This can be bought for just $49! That’s over $100 savings from Parallels or VMWare (with those two you need to buy a copy of Windows)! CrossOver packages their product in editions for different uses–like one for running Office–or the CrossOver Chromium product which only runs Chromium (Chromium is the open-source name for Google Chrome)–or the full version which will run most common Windows apps. The biggest issue is speed. It’s job is a lot like that of Apple’s Rosetta technology to translate PowerPC instructions to Intel, CrossOver translates Win32 API to Cocoa and DirectX to OpenGL, so don’t expect to be able to play a game or edit movies with this, but it’s more than fast enough for Office.

You can download CrossOver Chromium here, it’s free! I can only assume that this product is free to advertise what they’re able to do. This solution has been out for a while and I’ve resisted writing about it because it’s not near perfect.

For a point of reference, Safari open on Intel iMac with just one bounce (< 1 second) and CrossOver Chromium does one bounce then has a spinning circle showing that it’s loading… this takes just over 5 seconds. But once it’s running it handles page loading pretty well… but I just can’t get over the weird cursor issue–when you move your cursor on top of CrossOver Chromium your cursor changes to a white Windows cursor… and some Windows keyboard shortcuts work (the mac ones do to!)

So, for now it’ll have to do it for you, and Google should have the native Mac version out soon, I hope…

A Youtube video demonstrating CrossOver Chromium: here.

CodeWeaver’s CrossOver Chromium FAQ