Free mac chess programs?

[pavel]

Any good free mac chess programs (other than sigma)?

Just bought myself a shiny unibody macbook, the default chess app with OS X sucks balls.

[Terry McCracken]

Any good free mac chess programs (other than sigma)?

Just bought myself a shiny unibody macbook, the default chess app with OS X sucks balls.

Buy it....the only good program for Macs is HIARCS.

[Dann Corbit]

Any good free mac chess programs (other than sigma)?

Just bought myself a shiny unibody macbook, the default chess app with OS X sucks balls.

Buy it....the only good program for Macs is HIARCS.

What's wrong with Glaurung for the Mac?
It's nearly as strong as Hiarcs and it's free.

That having been said, it would be a good idea to buy Hiarcs as well.

[pavel]

Any good free mac chess programs (other than sigma)?

Just bought myself a shiny unibody macbook, the default chess app with OS X sucks balls.

Buy it....the only good program for Macs is HIARCS.

What's wrong with Glaurung for the Mac?
It's nearly as strong as Hiarcs and it's free.

That having been said, it would be a good idea to buy Hiarcs as well.

Thanks Dann will give it a try.

[glorfindel]

Since we are talking about commercial programs as well, there is also Shredder with its java interface. The interface is not the most feature-packed there is, but it has support of pgn with nested variations, access to online opening database and online 6-man endgame database. You can at least analyze a game decently perhaps with a UCI engine stronger than Shredder Classic, and it is the most (or only) beautiful interface I have on my linux box.

As for free programs, scid interface + strong open source engines like crafty, glaurung, fruit would be great.

[nepossiver]

Latest versions of toga were ported for Mac, and the same patch can be applied to other recent Toga/Fruit derivatives (cyclone, grapefruit). Scid on Mac wasn't good for me, though.

[pavel]

really liking the Glaurung GUIand ofcourse the engine. I see that I can install UCI engine, off to finding some strong mac UCI engines. Any recommendation?

[Terry McCracken]

really liking the Glaurung GUIand ofcourse the engine. I see that I can install UCI engine, off to finding some strong mac UCI engines. Any recommendation?

Mark Uniacke worked hard, buy Hiarcs 12 with a free upgrade to 12.1!

It's not expensive like your Mac and it's the strongest 32bit engine on the planet!

Dear HIARCS Chess Friends,

Season's greetings.

It's been a tough year for me personally, but HIARCS itself has done well this year scoring 1st or 2nd in the major tournaments despite being at a hardware disadvantage in most of them. Hiarcs' incredible performance on handheld devices continued with match wins over GMs and being the first chess engine in history to score an undefeated super Grandmaster performance on Pocket PC devices in a Grandmaster tournament, winning the 2008 Mescusor Cup in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Here is the latest news about HIARCS products by platform:


Pocket Chess HIARCS for CEBoard on Pocket PC
--------------------------------------------
This is our newest product and offers the strongest engine on Pocket PC (native PPC) with Set Elos from 750 Elo upwards, these are great for beginners, intermediate and expert plays alike.
You can read all about the new product and its features here:
http://www.hiarcs.com/ceb_chess_hiarcs.htm


Palm HIARCS 12
--------------
Yes, that is right, after 4 years a major update is coming to the Palm with the latest Hiarcs engine. I am working hard to have it ready before Christmas, time and family permitting!


PC Chess HIARCS 12
------------------
A new free update for PC customers to Hiarcs 12.1 is available on the Hiarcs website. This brings the PC and Mac versions into alignment. Existing PC customers should visit the download page to find the installer for the new update.
http://www.hiarcs.com/pc_download.htm

The downloads includes a new engine own book expanded by over 100,000 positions to a massive 915,052 positions. There is also a Chessbase ctg format book available for Hiarcs customers here:
http://www.hiarcs.com/pc_downloads/H12Book.zip


Sigma Chess HIARCS 12 for Macintosh
-----------------------------------
We are working on translating the HIARCS opening book format into a Sigma opening library so that the opening book can be fully read and explored.
This should be ready early in the new year.


An overview of the products available can be found on our main page:
http://www.hiarcs.com

Happy New Year to you all.

Best wishes,
Mark

[krazyken]

Fruit 2.3.1!
About a dozen Fruit & Toga variations.. but for now you got to compile your own.
Scid works great, needs compiling
You can get Sigma Chess Lite for Free and see how well it works, and pay $20 for the pro version.
There is a public beta of Exachess 4 which is the best chess DB you can get.
Xboard can be compiled for mac as well.
You can get Deep Shredder 11, but The Shredder GUI is full of bugs.
Other UCI engines that work well are:
Bikjump, Diablo, Flux, GreKo, Homer, and Hamsters
Rybka will work with microwine.Darwin
There are quite a number of Xboard engines that work as well.

[pavel]

Fruit 2.3.1!
About a dozen Fruit & Toga variations.. but for now you got to compile your own.
Scid works great, needs compiling
You can get Sigma Chess Lite for Free and see how well it works, and pay $20 for the pro version.
There is a public beta of Exachess 4 which is the best chess DB you can get.
Xboard can be compiled for mac as well.
You can get Deep Shredder 11, but The Shredder GUI is full of bugs.
Other UCI engines that work well are:
Bikjump, Diablo, Flux, GreKo, Homer, and Hamsters
Rybka will work with microwine.Darwin
There are quite a number of Xboard engines that work as well.

Awesome I didn't know Fruit had a mac built! Will try it out and I will also try out some of your recommendations. Thanks!