Finding Cross Platform Software for Mac OS X and Windows
Lately I’ve been writing about Apple increasing it’s market-share. But there’s one hitch to that. Software familiarity. One of the challenges of switching is getting to know new software and converting your files. Microsoft makes it easy with Office available on both platforms, but what other applications make the transition easy? If you are thinking about switching, wouldn’t it be nice if you could begin migrating (while still on the PC) to software that runs on the Mac? Or if you have to work on both OS X and Windows, wouldn’t it be nice if the software you used ran on both?
But how do easily you find software that runs on both?
To help address this problem, I began a website running the WordPress blog engine, promoting cross platform software. It’s called CrossOSS - The Cross Platform Software Database. “CrossOSS” is short for Cross Operating System Software. It is still being developed - e.g. I have recently discovered that Windows Internet Explorer doesn’t correctly display the pages - which any website developer will tell you is a very common problem. The CrossOSS site was developed using Canvas which is a WordPress plugin to greatly simplify the design and layout of WordPress powered sites.
Already, there are over 70 applications listed on CrossOSS. When I began the site, I expected to find maybe a dozen cross platform applications worth mentioning. Yes, I admit, I was that naive. Fact is, there are squillions. Many are available for no charge and are worthy alternatives to commercial applications.
Cross platform software development is very important to the Mac for a couple of reasons. Firstly, developers tend to favor Windows development over Mac or Linux which means less applications for those platforms, but cross platform development reverses that; and secondly and more importantly, it makes switching much easier.
Microsoft Office and Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign and Flash are good examples of that. Office in particular has made many people willing to switch to Mac because they knew they could bring all their documents with them and have them almost 100% compatible. With the Adobe applications, it means users don’t have to relearn different applications.
So if you are a Windows user who is considering switching in the future, get onto cross platform applications now because it will make the switch even easier.
What’s out there?
I’ve prepared a little list to give you some very small idea of just how much cross platform software is available, both charged (i.e. commercial or shareware), and not charged (free or donationware).
Blogging: Ecto
Browsers: FireFox. Opera, Flock
Database: FileMaker, MySQL
Desktop Publishing: InDesign, Scribus, Ragtime
Development: RealBasic, Revolution Studio
Finance: Quicken
Games: Civilization, FreeCiv, Wesnoth, Lux, Head over Heals, Super Collapse
Games Development: PTK 2D, Torque, Unity
Illustration: Illustrator, Inkscape
Image Editing: Photoshop, The Gimp
Mind Mapping: FreeMind, MindManager
Multimedia authoring: Flash
Office Suite: MS Office, ThinkFree Office, OpenOffice
Painting: ArtRage
Project Managment: FastTrack, Project-ON-Demand
Script Writing: Final Draft, Celtx
Statistics: R Project
And that is just a drop in the ocean. That is less than half the applications listed already on CrossOSS. Links to these applications are on CrossOSS or you can search for them on Google. But whatever you do, do support cross platform applications
If you are of the Mac/Linux persuasion rather than the Mac/Windows breed, let us know about your favorite apps that run on both platforms, because that’s one area that I haven’t turned over as many alternatives.
Feel free to share on here any other of your favorite cross platform applications (for instance, in the games category I’ve hardly scratched the surface). Check out cross platform applications and support them, because the continuation and growth of cross platform development is good news for the Mac.
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I am a Java developer, and I find I can now do all my work on my Intel iMac (apart from final testing - the code is to run on Linux, but Parallels has fixed it so I don’t even need a Linux box now). Just about every Java development tool is cross platform.
The most popular IDEs, Eclipse and NetBeans, are Universal and cross platform (ok, Eclipse 3.2 is still RC7 but has been very usable and stable for me) and most if not all Apache code is written to be cross platform. It’s easy to set up an Apache 2 server with Tomcat for JSPs. Resin (http://www.caucho.com) is also cross platform.
So, to add to your list:
Development: Java, Eclipse IDE, NetBeans IDE
Web Servers/Servlet Containers: Apache, Tomcat, Resin
Games: DosBox - http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/ - for running older DOS games, runs on lots of platforms.
Actually, if you got to http://www.sourceforge.net, you get an incredible amount of Open Source cross platform code, too much to mention here.
Can anyone recommend a good FREE FTP program? I’ve been using Cyberduck, but the latest version of that software is garbage. It just stopped working right and now crashes all the time.
Also, as a side note, I’m kind of amazed sometimes how the Mac and Win version of the same software differs. I use Final Draft on both versions, and the Mac version is so much prettier and less glichy. FD was originally a Mac-only program, so that may explain it partially, but by now you’d think it would be exactly the same on both platforms. And I use Flash on both systems, and the OS X version simply sucks. It’s slow and choppy, and that was the native version. I haven’t even bothered on my new Intel iMac.
And finally, I’ve been using AE and Photoshop recently, and have been really surprised at how well they run under Rosetta. I look forward to see just how fast the Universal versions are going to be.
Beeblebrox, I’ve not used the following, but they are apparently free:
<li >CrowzNest
<li >SecureFTP
I believe CrowzNest is from the same makers as CaptainFTP. As I said, I’ve not tried either so I don’t know for sure, but I took the liberty of searching Download.com for you. Hope they work.
Thanks, Aaron.
I’ve tried SecureFTP, and it isn’t what I’m looking for. I’ll take a look at CrowzNest and see what happens.
VLC! VLC!
Under Architecture
Archicad (Graphisoft)
VectorWorks (Nemetschek)
Under 3D modeling
Maya (Autodesk)
Cinema 4D (Maxon)
Modo (Luxology)
“I haven’t even bothered on my new Intel iMac.” -Beebx
Hey, Beeb welcome aboard the A-train. Run Parallels VM with that thing like the two that I have running in my office and all your software blues magically disappear. Parallels Desktop (as Nilp) pointed out, is a very stable environment for all your XP needs under OSX.
I have been running Photoshop and Dreamweaver on it for a few weeks coninuously without a hitch. I still haven’t toured the feature set yet so I can’t say for sure if you can have a “drop box” where both XP and OSX can access. That would be nice.
And yes, VLC is a very capable app for both XP and OSX (Also on Linux). I use this as a streaming server alongside Darwin Streaming Server (also, supported on all three major OSs). One wish I have is for Apple to release Quicktime on the Linux platform so I can stream MP4/H264 properly to our demo prototype WPAN units. VLC has a little problem with MPEG4/AAC/H264 combinations and I still have to convince the French developers of VLC that that problem do exist.
And as theoretical/research engineering goes, the two most used apps are Matlab/Modelsim (Mathworks) for designing discreet components to system-wide modeling all under the power of the CPU, and Mathematica (Wolfram) is very powerful in developing powerful algorithms and can also perform simulations as Matlab but not as elegant.
Mathematica is available for both XP and OSX. I believe the Linux edition is now available.
Matlab, unfortunately, caters only for XP at this time due to its .Net/Win32 integrations. It would be great for Mathworks to make Matlab cross-platform, they would have a lot of fans to convert now that the next Mac Pro and XServe (MacServer Pro?) will finally be unwrapped in a few months!
There you have it. These are perhaps the most needed by system engineers like myself. The rest can run under Parallels and/or Boot Camp until the native versions come out.
Run Parallels VM with that thing like the two that I have running in my office and all your software blues magically disappear.
I have two XP machines, my laptop and desktop, sitting right next to the iMac. I run Flash on that with no problems.
I haven’t installed Parallels or Boot Camp yet because a) of my two XP boxes and b) I don’t have a stand-alone copy of XP.
At some point, I plan on getting a Macbook or Macbook Pro to replace my laptop, and I’ll definitely look at installing XP for that.
“At some point, I plan on getting a Macbook or Macbook Pro to replace my laptop, and I’ll definitely look at installing XP for that.”-Beebx
You’ll definitely love it. I recommend for games do it with Boot Camp (100% pure hardware horsepower there) and Parallels VM for typical apps that do not need 100% juice. Still >90% caffeine is more than suitable for most video editing - even HD streaming/editing/playing. I use Parallels now for the streaming client with no apparent CPU% bottlenecks. Can you imagine running Parallels on a true Pro Mac? That would be awe-inspiring for an artist in all of us.
Keep your XP machines for general chores to make a living (in my case, it is true) and enjoy life with your sweet Macs.
Thanks all.
I don’t think I’d count Quicken as cross-platform. The Mac version forked off of the Windows version a long time ago and they are not the same product and the data files are not interchangeable. All they share is a name and a vendor.
Thanks for the tip, Beirne. I’ll look into that.
@ 27 06 2006 Robotech Infadel said:
Matlab, unfortunately, caters only for XP at this time due to its .Net/Win32 integrations. It would be great for Mathworks to make Matlab cross-platform, they would have a lot of fans to convert now that the next Mac Pro and XServe (MacServer Pro?) will finally be unwrapped in a few months
But if so, why am I using matlab for over a year right now?