HIARCS Mac Chess Explorer

Is this going to be a worthwhile Chessbase alternative for Mac users? What do people think?

Its obviously based on an earlier version of ChessX. Basically it is ChessX with the ability to play games, do full game analysis and with an opening browser, the Hiarcs engine,  and a few other features but without the dockable windows of ChessX, colored square and colored arrow annotations.

It is very very nice but then so is the current version of chessX and chessX at: www.box.com/chessX is free.

ChessX is licensed under GPLv2; they are unlikely to have been so stupid as to copy a GPL'd project and make it into a commercial program...

The original developer of ChessX is the same as that of HIARCS Mac Chess Explorer and is listed in the ChessX Source as the copyright owner. I am not a lawyer but I would assume that even though ChessX is licensed under GPLv2 he still owns the copyrights. In any case since he is the same developer for both it is not too surprising that they are very very similar.

In any case Hiarcs Chess Explorer is extremely well done, as is chessX for that matter. Its about time we are seeing quality chess programs show up on the Macintosh.

There is another in development, but it won't be ready before the end of the year...

i'm considering purchasing  HIARCS Mac Chess Explorer soon ... and i'm not really sure what the real differences are between the two available versions ... one is 'deep' / multi-core and the other is single core ... which one should i get ... and how do these relate to how strong my computer is?

If your Mac has got a multicore processor, the deep version is better as it will work faster. I am also considering purchasing a software for Mac, and I have not yet decided between deep Schredder and deep HIARCS, but I think I will get HIARCS

thanks for the response!

Trojanfoe ... there is another what, chessX? in dev ... for the mac? do you know when?

The latest version of ChessX .92 was just released today at http://chessx.sourceforge.net/

It is free, and open source.

Is it OK with Mac OS X 10.7.5 ?

motherf)(*^&^%$#

i just bought hiarcs chess explorer yesterday. i would not have bought it. 

Why? Because of the release of the latest version of ChessX ?

ChessX will work with any recent version of OSX both Lion and Mountain Lion. I use both Hiarcs Chess Explorer and ChessX. HCE has many more features, you can play against it, and it has a better Opening Explorer. But ChessX is extremely nice for what it does. ChessX has a much more flexible layout. 

Thanks for your answer

georges64, yes. 

Thanks JRadar. I have just downloaded ChessX  and I am going to test it. But I think I will get HIARCS anyway, because of its hability to do full game analysis, which I understand is not possible with ChessX.

that's a good point and that is definitely a feature i'm interested in ... i was simply having a momentary lapse of buyers remorse, based on price alone. 

There is another Mac-based Chess Database GUI in development.  See the screenshot above.  It should be ready by the start of next year.  It will also introduce a new binary chess database file format that I publish the specs for and provide an open-source reference implementation.