When Apple came out with the Intel-based Mac, some people feared it would be the end of the world as we knew it. While some people took to the streets with cardboard box signs scribed with tales of doomsday for others to read, others embraced it and began designing ways to allow the Mac to stretch out even further than it already had. They took this moment as an opportunity to help the Mac community have a choic When Apple came out with the Intel-based Mac, some people feared it would be the end of the world as we knew it. While some people took to the streets with cardboard box signs scribed with tales of doomsday for others to read, others embraced it and began designing ways to allow the Mac to stretch out even further than it already had. They took this moment as an opportunity to help the Mac community have a choice… a choice. In a nutshell, there are three “choices” being made available. Apple announced Boot Camp, a dual booting solution that allows the Mac user to run two separate operating systems on one PC. The user can switch between the operating systems as needed, simply by rebooting. Parallels and VMware each announced a virtualization solution. Through the process of virtualization, a virtual machine can be created that runs its own isolated operating system within a logical partition that lives within the native operating system. And now, a third “choice” has been made available. The software company CodeWeavers has launched its own solution for Intel Mac users. The company recently announced a public beta version of CrossOver for Mac, which enables Intel Mac users to run Windows applications and games, without a required reboot (unlike Boot Camp) and without requiring a copy of the Windows operating system (unlike virtualization). It also allows applications to appear in the same OS X Finder interface that Mac users are already familiar with. CrossOver is a commercialized version of the open source Wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator) project which is itself a re-implementation of the Win32 API, allowing applications to run as if natively on the target OS. CodeWeavers already has an established history within the Linux community with their Linux version of CrossOver. However, the Mac version is still new and will require some extensive tire kicking before it can compete with some of the competitive solutions that it is already faced with.The company is making great strides and already offers official support for about 50 applications including Microsoft Office 2003, Microsoft Visio, Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0, Intuit Quicken, as well as games such as Half-Life. Codeweavers said that this release is in early test stages but that the public beta will give users a taste of what is to come. They promise substantial changes and improvements down the road before the final version of the product ships. The beta can be downloaded now and will work for 60 days. Interested users can pre-order the final version for the reduced price of $39.95. Software Development