So.. are we mostly all Mac users here?

I am, for one.  And chess is the only part of my life that occasionally makes me look wistfully over the fence into PC-Land with anything like envy. 

I miss Fritz's 'sparring' mode, with its very human-like ability to make errors that force the user to see tactical possibilities.  I'd like to try Rybka.

I want to try BookUp also.  I've heard there's a Mac version, but I've never actually managed to find it.  Perhaps it's a thing of the past.

On the bright side, ExaChess is an excellent chess database application, and for engines, we've got Vektor, Sigma-HIARCS and Shredder on our side. 

At least I don't have to pine about the fact that Chess Mentor is only available for Windows anymore.  :)

Do you know of any good databases for the mac?

I mentioned ExaChess above.  It's an excellent database manager and chess toolkit for the Mac - recently updated.  There's a free version that is quite full-featured, if you want to experiment. 

Is that what you meant?  ExaChess supports PGN & EPD databases, as well as the older ".cbi" format used by Chessbase, etc., so there are lots of (individual) databases you could potentially use on your Mac.  ExaChess comes with several, totalling about 600 000 individual games, including all the World Championship games since '72 and many famous historical games.

Scid for mac is the solution (http://scid.sourceforge.net/download.html) It has everythig all of you talked about, you can use toga, fruit or glaurung with scid and it´s free. There is also a native version of glaurung for mac (gui and engine) also freeware.

Possibly - I'll check out the free version.

I'm looking for something to rival Chessbase's mega DB - something a bit better than what we get here with Games Explorer.

Interesting! 

I just downloaded the patched 3.7.1 version .dmg and installed it.  The application doesn't seem to launch.  Did I skip a step?

I'm really not a "Mac person", a "PC Person" or a "Insert-favorite-OS-here person". I'm a SysAdmin that deals mostly with Microsoft based systems, but I've had to support a fleet of about 30 to 40 Macs at one workplace. I do like Macs, especially now that they're built on BSD, but I seem to be content with Windows for the moment. However, I'm tempted to wipe my Windows installation and start using OpenSUSE full time.

Anyway, yes, Fritz does make me glad to be a Windows user. I haven't purchased it yet, but am planning to at some point in the hopefully-near-future. I'm not nearly advanced enough in my chess learning to care about some of the more advanced features. I just want something that can analyze my moves and tell me why I'm so bad. 

Yeah, I used to like Fritz's analysis too.  Don't think of sparring mode as an advanced feature though...  It's one of the most practical ways of improving your eye for tactics in real games (as opposed to puzzles - where you *know* they are there) I've ever seen.

Another Mac user...  but no envy thus far about chess engines.  I think for that to really matter you need to have (1) more time to devote to playing chess than I have at the moment and (2) a lot more skill. 

At my level I don't need a powerful engine to learn not to hang a piece, rather I just need to keep my eyes open. 

That said, in a few years I could see the need. 

Scid 3.7.1 patched 14.3MB (March 2009) Mac OS X 10.4 or later, without embedded Tcl/Tk frameworks, requires Tcl/Tk Aqua 8.5. Maybe you did not instaled Tcl/Tk....

:)

Actually, I blew about an hour on this last night without getting anywhere.  My first mistake was downloading a version that (I think) included the Tcl/Tk framework, but which was for OS X 10.5 (whereas I have 10.4).  So I dumped that and downloaded both the version you linked above and Tcl/Tk Aqua 8.5 (8.5.6 to be specific, I think).  I installed Tcl/Tk, and then Scid, but no luck:  It still wouldn't start up.

The whole business of tcl/tk is a mystery to me, and I'm not sure if there was something else I needed to do to configure that side of it.  I'm starting to think it would be easier to upgrade to OS X 10.5 and try again with the latest version of Scid.  Is there something explicit you have to do to 'start' the tcl/tk framework?  Cheers.

There is a very active forum of scid users players in this link I hope this can be usefull for you. The man who made the mac version is called Israel Chacua Fuentes. I´m sure they will help you because they always helped me so much in the past. 

There is nothing you have to do with tcl/tk but must be instaled. Maybe OS X version is the problem but I´m not an expert :)

I hope this can be usefull for you. Cheers 

Thanks again, Ousland.  I'll see what I can find out.

Anyone use Shredder for the Mac?

In other news, I considered getting a Mac mini at a local MicroCenter which was on sale for $399. 

I use Shredder 11 for Mac.  The feature-set is quite basic, but everything is nicely implemented and I've got no complaints.  You might want to also look at Sigma-HIARCS options as well.  For one thing, the engine for Shredder 11 cannot be de-coupled from the application itself (as far as I know), whereas HIARCS provides a UCI engine that could be used in ExaChess or Scid, etc.

I must admit I've been spending more time in my database tool (where I can analyse with or play against Fruit or Glaurung) these days.  With an electronic board and no end of 'opponents' on the iPod, Shredder 11 gets less and less of my attention.

Hi,

I'm the maintainer of the Scid execs you downloaded and I'm sorry you are having so many troubles with it. This last release of Scid has been a pain for me to get it working on 10.4, after many days trying, I got confirmation that it worked on third party machines (it always worked on the one I had) with the Tcl/Tk aqua installed, but it seems it doesn't work on yours (pulling my hairs!). I have no idea of where the problem is but, if you are still interested, you could try compiling it yourself, let me know if you need any help there.

Israel

EDIT:

If there is a space in the path to Scid it will not lunch, that'll be fixed for the next release.

Thank you very much, Israel!  That is, without exception, the single most proactive piece of customer support I've ever heard of - and for a free product to boot! 

Unfortunately, I've been too distracted (by WORK of all things) for most of this past week to give this issue much attention.  In other news, there may be an upgrade to 10.5 in my near future, so I might wait till after that to push hard for a resolution.  But I definitely want to try it out, based on the screenshots & reviews - looks like a fantastic app.

Also, the only path I can see is "\Applications\Scid.app".  I can't find a representation of the path that includes anything up-river from "applications," but that might just be that I don't know where to look.  I'll keep checking in on your downloads page anyway. 

Thanks again.

I have used Chessmaster (good), Chessassistant (better) but today I only use Scid. My first Scid on mac was compiled by myself following Israel step by step help. Now I have one of Israel´s compilations and I´m very happy with it.  

Thanks again Israel for your work

You have to thank the low number of users and Google Alerts for the proactive support ;)

As for the space on the path, the Applications folder is on the root directory, so that options has been ruled out, too bad.

Ousland: I'm glad it works for you, there is a new release coming soon, keep checking Scid's site!

Israel

If that price was for the new Mac mini it's a good deal. Otherwise I'd consider a refurbished iMac direct from Apple.com