CrossOver 7 Released

[John Spikowski]

Hi Folks,

I am pleased to announce that we have shipped CrossOver 7 for both
Macintosh and Linux.  New in Version 7 is support for
Microsoft Office 2007, dramatically improved support for Outlook 2003
and Internet Explorer 6,  and a broad range of improvements that should
bring improvements to all Windows applications.

For our Linux customers, it also brings expanded support for most
Adobe programs, with Photoshop CS and CS2 working particularly well.

For our Macintosh customers, this release also brings a change in our
product mix.  We are now providing "CrossOver Mac Standard" and
"CrossOver Mac Professional".  The new Standard product will mirror
the Linux Standard product, in that it will be a lower priced product
with more basic support and no multiple user support.  The new
CrossOver Mac Professional product replaces the existing CrossOver Mac
product.  It continues to have our best support, support for multiple users,
and, CrossOver Mac Pro continues to come with a
complimentary copy of CrossOver Games.

If you have purchased CrossOver Mac in the past, you have been automatically
upgraded to a CrossOver Mac Pro license.

Finally, another major benefit of 7.0 is that it includes many of the
elements of Wine 1.0, which was also released today. This is a major
milestone for us, and for the Wine project.  Our many years of work,
and your many years of supporting our work, have enabled us to
help bring Wine to this milestone.  I am very proud to have been
part of this, and very grateful for all the support of
our customers, advocates, and fellow Wine developers.

If you are an existing CrossOver customer with an active support entitlement,
you can visit our web site to download this latest version:
  www.codeweavers.com
You will need to log in with the email and password that you used when
purchasing CrossOver.  Please write to info@codeweavers.com if you need
help with this process.

Thanks again for all your support, and I hope that you enjoy CrossOver 7!

Cheers,

Jeremy White
CEO
CodeWeavers

---
Version 7.0 Changelog:

  New application support:
      Office 2007 (Including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook)
      Photoshop CS and CS2
      Added support for the "Compatibility Pack for the 2007 Office system"
        so that Office 2003 can open Office 2007 documents


    Bug fixes:
      Greatly improved online banking integration in Quicken 2007 and 2008
      Greatly improved Outlook behavior, particularly with Exchange servers
      Fixed service pack support for several versions of Office
      Improved IE support in win2000 and winxp bottles (though win98 is
        still better)
      Improved support for modern Linux distributions (especially Ubuntu)
      Fixed a seriously horrible interaction with the Logitech Control Center
      documents from Office 2007

    This version also includes countless Wine fixes and synchronizes with Wine 1.0.
    Many small bugs should be fixed, and unsupported application behavior should be greatly
    improved.

[Edwin Knoppert]

It's really neat indeed.
It is a milestone indeed.

But.. the need to purchase a license makes me wonder if this isn't equal to buy a Windows license.
Maybe we can discuss the pros and cons of this product.

[John Spikowski]

Edwin,

The reason the Wine project is making great progress is due to the commercial effort of CrossOver. They just make it easier to install Wine and have a nice front end for non-technical users. Wine 1.0 and CrossOver 7.0 are in sync. (see announcement above) Your not paying for a OS with CrossOver but the ability to run Windows applications under Linux or the Mac.

If you become an advocate for a product under CrossOver, there is no cost and you have access to the nightly builds and private developers forums.

One could say why buy PwrDev when there is DDT for free. 

John

[Edwin Knoppert]

I would not discussing about Crossover actually but more why running Windows apps under Linux.
Wine is free but afaik not trivial.. when i have the time i'll investigate how it works and behavious.
If this remains free and easy to use then i would have almost no problem with that idea.

Crossover is not free, i would not mind purchasing a license for myself, that's not the discussion at all but why would a Linux user purchase a license for crossover If they could purchase the real thing?
What makes his windows app(s) so interesting he would invest money in running those?

A tool like PwrDev is a different thing, it's for development of applications, the usage of those tools is for totally different people.

The greates benefit of vendors is having apps working under Wine or a similar integration.
But Linux is not for idiots and using Wine is probably equally difficult.
*Thats* where Wine is for, for the majority and not for the few people who wants to use a development tool like PwrDev.

What if PwrDev runs fine:
Will one create apps under Linux and sell Windows software?
The apps created are never a Linux application.

So far i don't see a real point in using all of this.
It's funny it can run but besides people running their office software or some home software i don't see much future in this.
Unless this solution becomes free and is more integrated into Linux, like 100% integrated?

[John Spikowski]

Edwin,

The point of Wine is that you running WIndows applications but using Linux resources. Unlike a VM, ODBC under Wine is acessing unixODBC giving you access to Linux resources and not some DB in a file emulating a disk.

VirtualBox is nice but the goal of the Wine project is to run any Windows program on Linux or the Mac. If you Look at Google's Picasa (FREE) port to CrossOver, you will see how a traditional Windows product can be enhanced by running under a different OS.

If your happy with Windows OS and the company behind it then Wine isn't for you.

John

[Edwin Knoppert]

You keep telling it from your perspective.
You are barely a regular customer (i guess)
From a programmers perspective this is currently a zero-market.
Only if you can make an app working under Linux and some company has serious benefit of using it then you'll have a market.
For example openoffice under Linux may have a company decide to switch.
If the office has other Windows software and not able to run it properly under Linux then there is no switch.
Who says their software runs fine (under Wine), it's an investment to investigate if their software runs under Linux.
I don't see a company make that effort to fully test their software under Wine.

And yes i was always happy with Windows and Visual Basic and so on.
Due the fact it is that popular it has a large market and thus $$$'s for me.
If Linux was a big market and Windows barely why should i bother with Windows?

[John Spikowski]

You keep telling it from your perspective.

Well, I don't feel comfortable explaining it from anyone else's. 

If I'm selling a Windows application and have been getting requests for my application under Linux or the Mac, the cost and time saved using CrossOver rather then starting from scratch is huge. Microsoft has said that open source is their biggest competitor, not Google. Wake up and smell the roses, times are changing and the dominance that Microsoft has enjoyed in the past is dwindling as well as their stock value. Microsoft hasn't paid a dividend of more then .11 cents since Jan. 1, 2005. This is a company investors are use to a annual stock split of 2 for 1.

John