More recently I started using the IDEA feature on Aquarium, and running long analysis sessions stress the processor and the resource consumption on the VM and my Mac slows down. So I think that if you use intense, prolonged analysis features (e.g. correspondence chess at ICCF, opening preparation, exploring new lines) it is best to have a dedicated machine. You can reuse an old machine if it fast enough, but if you would go with a dedicated chess machine, it would likely be a native Windows one, with at least 6 cores (e.g. i7 6800k or better) as it would have three to four times the performance of a Parallels hosted VM on the Mac. That said, I would just use the Windows machine through windows remote desktop from my Mac (instead of using Parallels) to avoid consuming local resources. Finally, if you run long analysis sessions (e.g. nightly) you might want to have a good cooling system for the processors running at 100% for hours, so that goes more in the direction of having a desktop cabinet (e.g. thermaltake) rather than a laptop, either Windows or Mac.
I am the author of Chess Insight for macOS. This piece of software is an original development written in first place for my personal use to address the issue discussed above. I just badly wanted to have a chess app with a nice look and feel and the app works natively on my Mac to allow me to rid of Parallels and Fritz, something easy to use to organize the huge collection of pgn files and books I have, something allows me to annotate and keep in order my own OTB games. Eventually, I published it in the Mac App Store. The app is not free the cost is $24.99 which I hope not a big price for upcoming maintenance and updates. And, still, it is much more affordable than any of "commercial monsters". I hope many of you will get a tool they wanted and I will get some work to do with your feedback.
Chess Programs For Mac Os X
Despite the warning, it is possible to remove unnecessary standard programs via Terminal. But first, you should know that with the release of macOS 10.12 Apple has made changes in its security technology System Integrity Protection (SIP) and it now forbids modifying system items on Macs. The SIP limits the actions that the user can perform on protected parts of the Mac operating system.
Automator is an app used to create workflows for automating repetitive tasks into batches for quicker alteration via point-and-click (or drag and drop). This saves time and effort over human intervention to manually change each file separately. Automator enables the repetition of tasks across a wide variety of programs, including Finder, Safari, Calendar, Contacts and others. It can also work with third-party applications such as Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop or Pixelmator. The icon features a robot holding a pipe, a reference to pipelines, a computer science term for connected data workflows. Automator was first released with Mac OS X Tiger (10.4).[6]
Apple Chess is a 3D chess game for macOS, developed by Apple Inc. as a fork of GNOME Chess (formerly "glChess").[10] Its history dates back to OpenStep and Mac OS X 10.2. It supports chess variants such as crazyhouse and suicide chess. Apple redistributes the source code under its own Apple Sample Code License, after a special permission has been granted from the original authors of GNOME Chess (which is licensed under GPL3).[11][10] Apple ships with the game also the Sjeng chess engine (GPL).
Activity Monitor is a system monitor for the macOS operating system, which also incorporates task manager functionality.[28][29] Activity Monitor appeared in Mac OS X v10.3, when it subsumed the functionality of the programs Process Viewer (a task manager) and CPU Monitor found in the previous version of OS X.[30][31] In OS X 10.9, Activity Monitor was significantly revamped and gained a fifth tab for "energy" (in addition to CPU, memory, disk, and network).[32]
It compiles technical information on all of the installed hardware, devices, drivers, applications, system settings, system software programs and kernel extensions installed on the host computer. It can export this information as plain text, RTF or in the plist XML format. This information is used to diagnose problems. System Profiler can be extremely useful if attempting to diagnose a hardware problem. A user can send the information directly to Apple if the user desires. It has support for scripting automation through AppleScript and some limited support in Automator.
The Feedback Assistant is made available to customers in the Apple Software Customer Seeding, AppleSeed for IT or Apple Beta Software programs and allows a user to manually send feedback, reports, or requests to Apple.[68]
Network Utility showed information about each of your network connections, including the MAC address of the interface, the IP address assigned to it, its speed and status, a count of data packets sent and received, and a count of transmission errors and collisions. It also provided a GUI to the netstat, ping, traceroute, whois, finger, and stroke UNIX programs.
Our popular WinTD chess tournament pairing software is available for Macintosh computers running OS X. It will run on any OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) or later, including Big Sur (11) and Monterey (12). The features of the program are essentially identical to those of the Windows Version of WinTD 5.0 (see Features for details) and files are compatible between the platforms.
This is why the first thing you do is replacing native programs with your favorite apps. After all, the point of the Mac App Store and third-party developers is to improve on the apps that Apple provides as defaults or even create new possibilities outright.
Note that Apple renamed Mac OS X into macOS. Since macOS 10.6, only intel 64 bit is supported (but 32 bit programs still run). PowerPC, universal and the classic environment are no longer supported. Users of older Apple computers can use the Universal page. Users of M1 machines or with macOS 11 or 12, please refer to M1 or macOS 11.
HIARCS Chess Explorer is a superb new chess database, analysis and playing program for either PC Windows or Apple Macintosh computers. It offers a truly innovative and intuitive new graphical user interface together with the reigning World Chess Software Champion HIARCS 14 chess engine. This unique combination is refreshingly easy to use and includes many unique new features for managing chess databases, chess preparation, analysis and training for players of all abilities from beginner to Grandmaster.
HIARCS Chess Explorer An innovative and powerful new chess software application for PC and Mac offering chess players of all abilities the unique combination of the World Chess Software Champion HIARCS chess engine together with a powerful, intuitive and easy to use multi-platform, multi-lingual chess graphical user interface.
Most of my chess preparation and studying used to revolve around ChessBase products. I stored my databases and notes in .cbh files, used computers with the ChessBase interface to study and do preparation, and used the tools that Fritz 12 gave as an aid.
3. Scid plays very well with chess engines for use in analyzing games. I have Houdini 1.5 (the free version before it went commercial with 2.0), some version of Stockfish (free), and some version of Crafty (free) in use with my Scid.
For native OSX databases you're pretty much limited to SCID and Exachess unless you want to go the Parallels route and use windows software from there. You might be able to rig up WINE and run it on the later versions of OSX; not sure, never tried it.
In both of these you'll be missing the high-end features of chess base, such as the opening report. I'm not aware of anything on OSX that opens the .cbh format files. ChessBase got really closed after the older (CB6 and earlier) file format was decoded and distributed. I'm not aware of anyone who has decoded their cbh format.
As for "use chess computers," I suspect you are referring to top chess-playing software. Fritz, being a CB product, will never appear for OSX. However, most of the rest of the top names already have an OSX version: HIARCS, Shredder, Stockfish; Rybka and Houdini have yet to appear on OSX.
The Games menu in Chess Openings Wizard for Mac does quite a bit of the work of a game database like ChessBase, indexing millions of games in PGN format. No direct support for .CBH files though. When it comes to studying chess and using the strongest chess engines on a Mac, it's a decent alternative.
Shane's Chess Information Database is a powerful Chess Toolkit, withwhich one can create huge databases, run chess engines, and playcasual games against the computer or online with the Free Internet ChessServer. It was originally written by Shane Hudson , and has received strongcontribution from Pascal Georges and others.
New and Improved Features include Overhauled and customizable interface.
Engine versus engine computer tournaments.
Extra search features, including move, end-of-game, and stalemate/checkmate searches.
Drag+Drop file opens for Windows and Linux.
Rewritten Gamelist widget with convenient context menus and buttons, and integrated Database Switcher.
Improved Computer Game and FICS features, including premove, and simultaneous observed games.
Many chess engine improvements, including max-ply option, an unlimited number of engines running, and the function hot-keys can be explicitly set.
New EPD search and analyze features.
Tri-coloured Tree bar-graphs, and options for more or less statistics.
Ratings Graph can show multiple players, and Score graph is an attractive bar graph.
Improved Book windows, including book compare, and remove move features.
Redone Button and Tool bars.
The Chessboard/Pieces config widget has been overhauled, and includes support for custom tilesand pieces.
Browse multiple games.
Recent Game and Player-info histories.
Bug tested Undo and Redo features.
The Help index is meaningful to new users, with links to the game's main features.
Clickable Variation Arrows, and Paste Variation feature.
A user friendly Annotation feature, with search-to-depth feature.
Better support for UTF and Latin character sets in PGN export/imports.
Improved and more powerful Tree Mask feature.
Chess variants are unsupported except for Chess960/Fischer Chess - which is supported by a source-code patch.
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