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The Mac Comes To StackView!

Published on Thursday, October 30, 2008 in , , , , ,

StackViewNo, I don't have the headline backwards. StackView is still only available as a Windows program, but recent developments have actually made it easier and better for Macs to run StackView!

With the older PowerPC-based Macs, the only way to run Windows programs was via emulators like Virtual PC. Once the Macs switched to Intel-based chips, the emulators became even easier to set up.

The current version of the operating system, Mac OS X Leopard, even has a built-in program, called Boot Camp, that lets you boot your Mac up as a Windows computer. There are also programs like Parallels, that let you run Windows and OS X simultaneously.

These all worked well enough, but they all suffered from the same flaw. Whether the emulators were free or commercially available, they all required you to purchase a copy of Windows. If a Mac user just wanted to run StackView, this expense is a little hard to justify.

Back in September, Nick Pudar announced a way to run StackView on the Mac that keeps everything very inexpensive! The big secret is running Darwine, a version of Wine that runs on Intel-based Macs (via Darwin, thus the name).

The big advantage to Darwine is that it's free and you don't need to purchase Windows! It is important, however, to keep in mind that both Darwine and StackView are developed and maintained as personal projects, so they won't always work perfectly together. Also, the faster your Intel-based Mac is, the better experience you'll have with both programs.

You should download Darwine first (I highly recommend the most recent stable build - 1.0.1 at this writing), and setting it up first. From there, download StackView and set it up. Once that's done, you can run it an use it.

The PDF manual is good, but I also suggest accessing the StackView Musings blog and going through the tutorials, as well.

One last note: In the StackView on the Mac post itself, ignore the 2nd paragraph. That guy sounds like a real jerk. ;)

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1 Response to The Mac Comes To StackView!

10:38 AM

This is great! I just switched to a mac, and I didn't think there would be an easy, cheap way to run stackview. I've got it up and running, but I receive an error when I try to save a deck file - any ideas on how to fix this?

Thanks!