Got a message today that Hiarcs’ Mac Chess Explorer is finally available:
At last, after a very long wait, it has finally come for us to check out.
It comes bundled with Hiarcs 14 and costs US$59.95 for the single-core version, and US$99.95 for the Deep Hiarcs (multi-core/multi-processor version).
By the way, there’s also the PC Chess Explorer. But what the heck, we’re only interested in Mac here, right?
I haven’t tried the software yet, because I don’t have the budget. Maybe the Hiarcs team would like to sponsor and give us a free copy for us to post a review. There wasn’t even a free trial available so we couldn’t really check it out, and compare at least to ShredderChess (it had a free trial) and the completely free Stockfish.
Honestly, though, based on the screenshots posted on their website, the interface looks cheap. I mean, it doesn’t have the polish that Mac OS X was known for. But we have to keep that aside when we talk of chess software, though. What matters most is the performance, right?
What’s most important here is that we have another option for Chess on a Mac. We can only hope that it’s a viable alternative.