Admittedly, Chessbase’ Fritz 12 is the best program for the PC. The Fritz 12 (or even the Deep Fritz 12) engine may not be the strongest computer chess engine out there, but the Chessbase interface is able to deliver on its purpose. I use it widely when analyzing games and studying openings. I load my favorite engines like Rybka, Houdini, Stockfish, etc., to test some of the more stronger engines.
But the problem is it’s only available in PC. When oh when can they be able to make a program for the Mac? I’m a Mac convert now, and there really are a lot of Mac users who are anticipating this from Chessbase. Although I already paid for the licensed copy of Fritz 12 for Windows, I’ll be willing to shell out another for the Mac — for as long as it will natively run on the Intel Mac.
I know there are already chess programs for Mac. The closest you can get to a Fritz 12 experience are Shredder Chess and Hiarcs. I have tried tinkering with the trial version of the Shredder Classic 4 Mac, but it seems a lot are missing. The latest GUI for Hiarcs on the other hand is not yet available for Mac’s OS X Lion.
And I’ve always wanted to go with the trusted and familiar experience of a Chessbase program.
BTW, the chess UCI engines that are widely available around the internet are usually not available for Mac. They just won’t work. You need to have a Mac version of the UCI in order to have employ them to your favorite Mac GUI. So far, I can get only a Mac UCI for Stockfish, but there are no available Mac UCI engines for Rybka and Houdini.
August 15, 2011 at 5:23 am
stockfish has a mac version. but not a good pgn viewer/editor…
August 15, 2011 at 9:30 am
Yes that’s right. And Stockfish is much less stable as an analysis tool for your past games.
February 15, 2012 at 12:38 am
hey guys I’m a chess player and developer and I amde a little guide on Macs with Stockfish and getting a good UCI PGn editor with it – I receommend Jose. At least on Lion it seems the best way to do this. fianchetto.org is my blog. Thanks.
April 9, 2012 at 8:54 pm
I am a mac developer and I wish to develop a GUI chess for mac to launch houdini engine.
April 10, 2012 at 12:42 am
Great! Tell me how can I help. Maybe to test the software or something.
May 20, 2012 at 10:02 pm
Sounds Great! I’m looking a soft like this to run Houdini 2
June 13, 2012 at 4:27 am
I bought a MAC pro and increased the ram and the processors, so I made it super fast and I can not find a great program for it. Hiarcs does not come out with EXPLORER and hiarcs 14.SIGMA does NOT run on the lion. shredder does not comout with deep 13 version. I am very disapointed with the chess programs. We need more programs for APPLE :is super fast and that is the only reason I got it. for CHESS.
June 13, 2012 at 8:21 am
It is unfortunate indeed. I loved my Mac, but we have to face it, it is not yet mainstream, that programmers will devote time and resources to take advantage of its hardware. I suggest you dual-boot with Windows for the time being and install Fritz or variety.
Note, even Shredder Chess for Mac is not efficient in using my Mac’s resources, in my opinion. It just makes the computer very very slow even if it’s not thinking at all, while opened in the background.
June 30, 2012 at 9:21 pm
Mac is the future.. no idea why chessbase can’t get this!
August 27, 2012 at 2:33 pm
They will get this. I’m not just sure up to when.
August 5, 2012 at 2:51 am
I’m on a mac, now on mountain lion, and i know this is of limited use to some as it’s a chessclub.com program, but if you do use a mac on ICC i’ve developed a chess client for icc in java like Jin and open source, that offers a lot of things that Jin doesn’t do. it’s called lantern chess, originally jack o’lantern chess till that was questioned with comments like why not call it holiday chess 🙂 at http://www.lanternchess.com full help on the web to ( bottom link on page). For FICS user’s i’ve known the programmer of Raptor in the past and i’d agree Raptor is the best. Mike
August 20, 2013 at 7:50 pm
I have to say guys luckily I am on Mac OSx 10.6.8 and having purchased Deep Hiarcs, this is an awesome programme. It includes Hiarcs in its engines, and I have also added Fruit 2.2.1 and stockfish for mini engine tournament. It works brilliantly and the updates from Hiarcs are free!