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Main
Date: 15 May 2006 12:52:09
From:
Subject: There are no good chess programs for Macintosh?
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I switched to Macintosh a couple of weeks ago only to see that there
seems to be no decent chess programs for mac.
Here's what I have tried out so far:
Shredder Classic Mac - Nice looking interface but game exporting
(including printing of games!?) isn't supported.
SigmaChess 6 - Promising set of features but apparently doesn't support
alternative move variations.
Vektor 3 - Almost zero database functionality.
ExaChessLite - The best I've found so far, but engine analyzing is
inadequate.
What's the deal here? I always thought that Chessbase products suck in
usability but I'd rather take the functionality than a fancy layout.
What programs do you other mac users prefer?
Ville
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Date: 20 May 2006 01:34:42
From: The Man Behind The Curtain
Subject: Re: There are no good chess programs for Macintosh?
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[email protected] wrote:
> I switched to Macintosh a couple of weeks ago only to see that there
> seems to be no decent chess programs for mac.
This is one of the reasons why, love Macs more though I do, I don't own
one. Great machine, no software that I want.
Unfortunately...
John
--
Von Herzen, moge es wieder zu Herzen gehen. --Beethoven
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Date: 18 May 2006 05:25:32
From:
Subject: Re: There are no good chess programs for Macintosh?
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Yes, the Hiarcs engine is available for Mac at least through the
SigmaChess interface. However you can't enter alternative move
variations with SigmaChess (correct me if I'm wrong), which makes it
absolutely useless for analysing purposes.
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Date: 19 May 2006 07:46:02
From: Henri Arsenault
Subject: Re: There are no good chess programs for Macintosh?
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In article <[email protected] >,
[email protected] wrote:
> Yes, the Hiarcs engine is available for Mac at least through the
> SigmaChess interface. However you can't enter alternative move
> variations with SigmaChess (correct me if I'm wrong), which makes it
> absolutely useless for analysing purposes.
You are correct. I have bought the Hiarcs engine for Sigma Chess, and
although you can analyze with it, you cannot analyze multiple lines by
moving back and forth along thye lines as you can with the Fritz
interface. Since I now have Fritz9 on the windows partition on my Intel
Mac, I now only use Fritz for analysis (and it's twice as fast for
analysis than Fritz9 on my 2 GHz P4...
Henri
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Date: 18 May 2006 03:52:15
From: Yves Surmont
Subject: Re: There are no good chess programs for Macintosh?
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I don't have a Mac, but didn't c Uniacke release a version of Hiarcs
for Mac? see www.hiarcs.com
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Date: 18 May 2006 00:00:15
From:
Subject: Re: There are no good chess programs for Macintosh?
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Wow, Neutron Star sure sounds heavy on the features but the 8 gigabytes
of RAM is way out of reach for us "normal users".
Anyway, it will be interesting to see the program when it's ready.
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Date: 17 May 2006 22:05:04
From: ChessProgrammer
Subject: Re: There are no good chess programs for Macintosh?
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I have been "working on" an improved version of "The Sniper" for a
decade and half now, I should really release the darn thing. See Chess
Life, December 1990 (or was it 1991?)
It will be renamed "Neutron Star", priily because it is
feature-heavy and dense on tablebases. Any denser and I would need to
name it "Black Hole."
Neutron Star will need a Mac with 8 GB of RAM to run. It probes the
5-piece tablebases in RAM during the search, and some of the 6-piece
slices that are most valuable (Rook + Pawn vs. Rook + Pawn, Queen +
Pawn vs. Queen + Pawn) and it has some highly proprietary 7- and
8-piece partially completed tablebases. It has an excellent buffering
scheme as it hits these tablebases, saving the most recently hit
positions in the buffer while paging the rest out to disk.
I integrated database querying directly to the GUI. From the position
over the board, it queries the DB in real time, and presents a
scrolling list of all games in the database that have encountered the
same position. If you click on a game, you can then replay the game
from tha point, and, again, any positions in the db appear in "real
time" in the scrolling list.
As I get closer to a release date I will publish a link to it.
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Date: 17 May 2006 02:43:16
From:
Subject: Re: There are no good chess programs for Macintosh?
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Yeah, at the moment it seems that I should just switch to Windows.
Unfortunately I don't have the new Intel Mac.
After testing out the various Macintosh programs I was also
disappointed by the game exporting features for publishing. At first
glance Jose seemed to have good exporting features (HTML, PDF, etc.)
but the results were buggy (diagrams overlapped with text) and
sometimes the program crashed. I also couldn't get the printing
functionality of Jose to work properly and moreover had major problems
with scandic letters.
Most other programs demand that you buy the full version of the
program. Thus it's impossible to test whether those programs really
have good exporting features.
Maybe I should just stop whining and code a "perfect" chess program for
Macintosh. :)
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Date: 17 May 2006 08:06:53
From: Henri Arsenault
Subject: Re: There are no good chess programs for Macintosh?
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In article <[email protected] >,
[email protected] wrote:
> Maybe I should just stop whining and code a "perfect" chess program for
> Macintosh. :)
Unfortunately there is no chess interface for the Mac that can even
begin to appraoch the Fritz interface that is available for Fritz,
Hiarcs, Shredder and other programs for Windows, especially for analysis
of multiple lines.
Henri
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Date: 16 May 2006 08:51:01
From: Henri Arsenault
Subject: Re: There are no good chess programs for Macintosh?
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If you have an Intel Mac, do as I do, put a Windows partition and run
Fritz9, shedder or Hiarcs under Windows. Fritz on the Intel Mac
analyzes twice as fast as my 2 GHz P4 (over 1000 knodes/sec)! All my
Windows games run under Windows on the Mac (including Oblivion, Swat4
etc - not to mention Fritz9), and I have my Mac partition for my Mac
programs and interface.
You DO have to reboot to change from OSX to Windows, but the new version
of OSX out in August should allow one to shift between OSX and Windows
without rebooting (just like between OS9 and OSX in Macs previous to
Intel).
Note that OS9 programs will not run on the intel Mac, and programs like
Microsoft Office have to run under Rosetta (a kind of emulator) until
Microsoft and others come out with Intel -compatible versions of their
programs.
Henri
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Date: 16 May 2006 11:20:54
From: Tord Kallqvist Romstad
Subject: Re: There are no good chess programs for Macintosh?
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Scatha is somewhat incomplete, has several known bugs and doesn't have a
lot of features. On the other hand, it can be used with any UCI
compatible engine, supports hexagonal chess (much more fun than normal
chess), and it's free:
http://www.glaurungchess.com
If you want to use it with Glaurung, the built-in normal chess engine,
please download and install the Glaurung 1.1 engine from the above
URL. Glaurung Mainz, the version which is bundled with the GUI, is
much older and weaker.
Unfortunately, the GUI will only run on a PowerPC Mac. For this
reason, development has stopped for the moment. I have upgraded to an
Intel Mac and can no longer use or develop the program. :-(
--
Tord Romstad
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Date: 16 May 2006 01:43:01
From:
Subject: Re: There are no good chess programs for Macintosh?
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Thanks for the tips Valente!
I think that a major drawback of Gambit is that it only supports the
Crafty engine. But Jose seemed to have good features although it guffs
up large chunks of memory thus being a bit slow. After a quick test
drive I found that game saving in to databases seemed to be a bit
tricky. First the games are automatically saved to the Autosave
"database". Then you can move them around by copypasting. Anyway, I'll
continue investigating the program further. A big plus is the fact that
it's free to use.
Odd that these two (obviously good) chess programs aren't mentioned in
most Macintosh chess link sites.
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Date: 16 May 2006 09:59:01
From: Valente
Subject: Re: There are no good chess programs for Macintosh?
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he he. Just get my Macintosh chess link collection, its the most complete in
the world probably.
<http://ballz.ababa.net/lidador/tinussoft.html >
in article [email protected],
[email protected] at [email protected] wrote on 16/05/06 9:43:
> Thanks for the tips Valente!
>
> I think that a major drawback of Gambit is that it only supports the
> Crafty engine. But Jose seemed to have good features although it guffs
> up large chunks of memory thus being a bit slow. After a quick test
> drive I found that game saving in to databases seemed to be a bit
> tricky. First the games are automatically saved to the Autosave
> "database". Then you can move them around by copypasting. Anyway, I'll
> continue investigating the program further. A big plus is the fact that
> it's free to use.
>
> Odd that these two (obviously good) chess programs aren't mentioned in
> most Macintosh chess link sites.
>
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Date: 16 May 2006 01:30:04
From: Valente
Subject: Re: There are no good chess programs for Macintosh?
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Maybe you could also try Gambit 1.0.1
<http://www.aqueoussoftware.com/gambit/index.lasso > and Jose 1.4.4
<http://jose-chess.sourceforge.net/index.html > maybe you can find there the
features you are seaching for. Jose has UCI engines compatibility and Gambit
uses a strong Crafty with good features for analysis.
in article [email protected],
[email protected] at [email protected] wrote on 15/05/06
20:52:
> I switched to Macintosh a couple of weeks ago only to see that there
> seems to be no decent chess programs for mac.
>
> Here's what I have tried out so far:
>
> Shredder Classic Mac - Nice looking interface but game exporting
> (including printing of games!?) isn't supported.
> SigmaChess 6 - Promising set of features but apparently doesn't support
> alternative move variations.
> Vektor 3 - Almost zero database functionality.
> ExaChessLite - The best I've found so far, but engine analyzing is
> inadequate.
>
> What's the deal here? I always thought that Chessbase products suck in
> usability but I'd rather take the functionality than a fancy layout.
> What programs do you other mac users prefer?
>
> Ville
>
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Date: 15 May 2006 22:13:02
From: Andreas P. Hofmann
Subject: Re: There are no good chess programs for Macintosh?
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<[email protected] > wrote:
> ExaChessLite - The best I've found so far, but engine analyzing is
> inadequate.
Not if SigmaChess is involved which in itself offers UCI compatibility
(Hiarcs, Fruit, Toga etc.). Overhere I use Sigma as the main engine for
Exachess and trigger the UCI engine inside Sigma.
Might sound long winded but does the trick for me.
--
Eppur Si Muove!
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