RYB Mac OS

TopicRybka Support & Discussion / Rybka Discussion / Rybka 4 for Apple Mac

Dear Vas,
please port Rybka 4 also for Mac OS X.
Shredder 11 (and also sure version 12) is also doing this. This would be great, also to get
a footstep into Mac's world and to gain much more friends-;)

I've mentioned this at least 3 times but he's not going to do it. Chessbase tried it several years ago and it didn't work for them. But now Apple are more popular and have around 10% of the computer share.

http://www.mactropolis.com/apple-news/apples-computer-market-share-falls-slightly-in-q1-of-2009/
This is according to Gartner. IDC is much more negative about Apple's recent performance.

check the share of high end computers most deep rybka customers are using.
http://www.macrumors.com/2009/07/23/apple-claims-91-of-1000-pc-market-revenue-in-june/

If this site is any indication, most high end Rybka users are building their own machines and overclocking them to insane levels, getting much more bang for the buck than they would with an Apple machine! :-D

BymhfmDate 2009-07-30 01:43Edited 2009-07-30 01:46

OK, so Macs have about 7% market share. Why waste time. And now that Windows 7 is coming out it will probably drop even lower.

while i could agree with this 5 years ago, it seems that more and more folks are using a mac laptop

So we agree.
I think a chess program for professionnal/experts would not have the same sales portion than compared to X years ago.
I will mostlikely soon go for a mac laptop very soon and will have to install Windows x/64 to use Rybka.
I would of course prefer to have it directly under Mac OS X

You obviously never tried to use CB Mac. It wasn't about market share as much as it was about quality. In a nutshell CB Mac was slow and filled with bugs (not to mention incompatible with CB Magazine); it was an embarrassment to have on your system if it was free, never mind paying $100 for it. And when Mac users responded by essentially saying 'we'll wait until you fix it, thank you' Chessbase decided instead to ignore them. It was less a case of no market (by myself, I could have sold nearly 100 copies of a good version of CB Mac, if it existed, and that's just one person) than a case of the CB developers not having a clue about mac development. These days, mac development is easier (as both HIARCS and Shredder have shown) unless you've chosen to mire yourself in Windows-only development libraries (like Bookup and Chess Assistant have done). I'm not sure what dev tools the Rybka team has used, but it's possible that if they took a serious look at it, they might find releasing a UCI Rybka Mac (intel) engine to be a walk in the park. (Yes, there are UCI interfaces available on the Mac.)

I'm a loyal customer of cbase but I must say that this indifference to mac is an outgrowth of having such a dominant market position (particularly on the data side of things) that cbase can simply thumb their noses at macs. If exachess (not a bad database) could read the latest cbase encryption, cbase would be falling over themselves to provide a new database for macs. (Well, maybe they would change the encryption instead.)
Anyway, I'm sort of skeptical about the long-term strategy of running windows on macs. Right now, most folks run xp, but as the cbase programs start demanding vista or i7, mac users are going to have devote increased system resources to windows, not an attractive outcome.
I speak as one who has both a mac and a Dell laptop, the former my number one computer and the latter to run windows programs, particularly Rybka and cbase.

is there a downside to dual booting vista or 7 with a mac, as opposed to xp? what do you mean by 'devoting more system resources'? just a bit more HD space isn't it?

Its only hd space if your booting directly to windows, although the mac books don't have big hds. I'm suspicious though about how things will perform if you run vista-ie7 on parallels or fusion.

right, but i wouldnt want to run chess software in virtualization mode anyway. surely its not a big deal to dual-boot OS X & win 7? it's probably take 20 seconds tops to switch OSs esp since youd presumably be keeping windows very trim. (i have no idea what im talking about, but as i understand bootcamp its a v painless process)
as for the macbook HD space, i dunno about all the models, but the 17 inch pro im considering getting (eventually) comes w/ 500GB, which is more than more than plenty obv.

It runs FINE in virtualization mode. All the time it is doing 'chess' it is running at full speed. If there is anything it is in the UI, and even that tends to run at full speed.
There is almost no penalty for running a chess program under mac OS. Whatever penalty there is is dwarfed by the fact that you are running on a notebook.
Once you run Hypervisor, all programs on the machine suffer whatever penalty there is, native of not.
But chess under Parallels or Fusion is a fine solution, and is massively cheaper and runs better than anything that Vas may do.

Hello, I have not experienced a problem with a dual boot. going back and forth to windows Vista and
apple OS is painless. Also when first booting up the system you can select which OP you want
to run
Wayne

BymhfmDate 2009-07-30 01:40Edited 2009-07-30 01:44

I hope Vas doesn't waste his time porting it to Mac. I'd rather see him adding new variants such as 10x8 Capablanca Random Chess, something similar to this program: http://geocities.com/smirf.chess/

It isn't only the time to port it of course, it is the support that has to follow as well. And he would also really need to buy a Mac as too.

There are 2 ways to look at this when we are talking about financial incentive for Vas to do this.He can look at it that since he is # 1 then if some-one wants to purchase Rybka they will do what ever it takes and will run it on their system doing what emulation is necessory be it Linux, Mac.So how many new customers will Vas get by doing this.Lets say that 7% of the worlds comps are Macs does not mean that 7% of all people interested in Computer Chess would own a Mac.So the numbers could end up being quite small for new customers which is the problem.
But on the other hand Vas could be missing out on big revenues that he just does not know about.Some Mac users are very loyal and have paid out extra money to own a Mac and are probably more extravagent with their purchases of software and only like the best.So all chess players/comp users that own a Mac that have been too afraid of MS could be the first time that they buy Rybka.
When Chess Base did it, I don't know the specifics like what and when.But I can imagine the scenario is quite different today and only by doing it will we ever know the answer.
For me, I am still waiting for Pocket Rybka which is another topic.

Yep! I'm waiting for pocket Rybka also.

I have a sneaky feeling that Pocket Rybka will be bundled with the yet to be released PocketFritz4.Just a hunch at this stage, but from reading Hiarcs forums, it is understood that there will be a new PF4 at some stage and what better way to get people to buy than to have Rybka4!!

You are probably right!

Agreed - Apple products are very reliable and sustain less attacks from those intent on hurting the PC population.

Maybe at some point, but this one is a bit lower on the list than Pocket PC and iPhone.
Vas

Would that be before or after you give up wearing white socks with sandals? :-D

Wait till next year's Mainz - I might surprise you. :)
Vas

It will be hard to surprise again next year. You have set the bar at an incredibly low level! :-)

Maybe he will wear a no sleeve t shirt or better no t short at all and for the final touch the sandals without socks. From the tournament hall directly to the beach.

I might have no choice but to go in the opposite direction. :)
Vas

woo-hoo! first i've heard of an iphone app.

From the standpoint of the analysis engine, I'd expect the iPhone engine to take much more time to prepare than an OS/X engine, for a smaller market. But it's your product, so the platform priority selection is yours. I'll just add the following note and be done with the subject:
I used to run things via virtualization and Wine (have an old version of Win2K in parallels on my Mac laptop, Wine on my Linux desktop -- BTW, in response to another poster, I'm not afraid of MS, I just got tired of Windows' frailty) but that gets a little sketchy at times, so I've decided not to buy anything but platform-native products (the idea that I'd switch my computing platform just to run *any* particular application is so arrogant it makes me spit; those who want my money don't get to dictate terms to me, if I'm paying for it, it plays by my rules). I still have access to the older products I've already purchased, but I refer to them less and less as time goes by.
If that sounded harsh, Vas, it's not aimed at you, but rather at some of the other attitudes I've encountered in this forum.

probably more money to be made from an iphone app though, as every rybka fan w/ an iphone is a sure customer

Where is Linux on that list?

why is the microwined version not enough for you?! Linux should be near the bottom of that list :)

Linux is in the same category as the Mac.
Vas

ByexigentskyDate 2009-08-12 07:15Edited 2009-08-12 07:41

Yes, I'd like that too. I also think it's a logical business proposition given that the Mac has largely been forsaken in terms of chess software. Moreover, Apple owns 91% of the premium market (computers costing more than $1,000, see here http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/07/apple-nabs-91-of-premium-computer-market-in-june.ars) and many people willing to buy a chess engine fall into this niche.

TopicRybka Support & Discussion / Rybka Discussion / Rybka 4 for Apple Mac