Running Fritz 12 on a Mac via Crossover

Fritz 12 is a great chess product that unfortunately has no Mac version. I’ve installed it on a Bootcamp partition, and it works great. But I hate rebooting to Windows everytime I need it. Besides, all my files are in the OS X partition.

I also tried running Fritz 12 in a Parallels Desktop. It works fine as well, but then I have to boot Windows on top of OS X, which in the process they’re sharing the same computer’s resources, which proves to be an inefficient environment to run a resource hungry application like Fritz 12. I was only able to assign 3GB of RAM out of the total installed 8GB, and the application can only utilize 1 CPU out of the total 4.

So what about Codeweaver’s Crossover? Well, this is how it looks like:

fritz-12-2

Notice how the black pieces have turned into. They must be the “zombies” in the chess world. There was nothing I can do to fix it. Really, when you start playing or analyzing games, you’ll get confused about the black and the white pieces.

That alone is already a total turn off. But it does not stop there: you can’t activate the application to get the latest software updates. I didn’t try installing additional engines, because I find it unnecessary to move forward with the setup.

So until now, there’s no ideal way to run a ChessBase application on a Mac. You can try one option but you have deal with the setbacks. A huge gap to fill in — a great opportunity for competitors to expand their market on.

Calling Hiarcs, Shredder, anyone?

By the way, it appears Stockfish UI does not work anymore in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.

My setup: MacBook Pro 13-inch, Early 2011, running OS X Mountain Lion.

No Comments

Rindenmulch November 1, 2012 Reply

You can fix that. In the board-design (via right-mouse click), just remove the one tick-box, that is called “rounded” or so. I only got the German version so I am not sure how it is called exactly. But there are only four tick-boxes to try anyway.

You may also set the design to Fritz4 and then choose anothert board color again.

There you go.

Cheers!

Ricky November 23, 2013 Reply

The best Mac GUI I use on Mac is Shredder, it just works but it is miles away from Fritz, Aquarium, and Arena Chess also. However it is good.

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