Info: Mac OS

From SIMION

UPDATE 2008-01-01: As noted in System Requirements, the Windows version of SIMION is now tested, confirmed to run quite well, and is officially supported by SIS on Intel-based Mac OS X via these three methods: CrossOver Mac, VMWare Fusion, and Parallels Desktop for Mac. See [Issue I463 (http://www.simion.com/issue/463)] for full technical details.

In Summary, there is not a native binary build of SIMION 7/8 for Mac OS. Nevertheless, you can achieve quite good results running SIMION 8 (maybe SIMION 7 too) on an Intel-based Mac if you use a Windows compatibility layer (CrossOver Mac (http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/)) or a virtualization layer (VMWare Fusion or Parallels Desktop for Mac). Options for older PowerPC-based Macs are more limited. The main possible methods of running SIMION on a Mac are listed below, listed roughly in decreasing order of preference.

Option #1: Windows Compatibility Layer: such as CrossOver/Darwine on Intel Macs - These include the commercial CrossOver Mac (http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/), which is based on the open Darwine (http://darwine.opendarwin.org/) (Wine) project. CrossOver is generally recommended over Darwine since there are reports (as of early 2007) that it works smoother in general, it is quite inexpensive, and we currently only have reports of running CrossOver. Crossover/Darwine is currently only expected to possibly work on Intel-based Macs (not older PowerPC-based Macs); this is made possible by the recent [Apple switch to Intel Processors (wikipedia) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Intel_transition)]. CrossOver runs SIMION at native speeds within Mac OS via Wine technology, similar to how a number of users have already been successfully running SIMION under Linux via Wine (comment: the particle flying stage seems to be about half speed compared to option #2 below for reasons not yet determined). CrossOver Mac was officially tested, confirmed to work quite well, and is formally supported by SIS for use with SIMION 8.0. See screenshot [*1] below of SIMION 8.0.x under CrossOver Mac. For full technical details on CrossOver compatibility see Issue I464 (http://www.simion.com/issue/464).

Option #2: Virtualization Layer: such as VMWare Fusion [1] (http://www.vmware.com/beta/fusion/) or Parallels Desktop for Mac [2] (http://www.parallels.com/en/products/desktop/) on Intel-based Macs. VMWare Fusion and Parallels were both officially tested, confirmed to work quite well, and are formally supported by SIS for use with SIMION 8.0. There also have been reports for SIMION 7.0. These run at native speeds. Microsoft Virtual PC for Mac and related virtualization products have not been tested but might work too. For full technical details on compatibility see Issue I465 (http://www.simion.com/issue/465) (Parallels Desktop for Mac) and Issue I466 (http://www.simion.com/issue/466) (VMWare Fusion).

Option #3: Emulation software - such as Microsoft Virtual PC for Mac (http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/virtualpc/virtualpc.aspx?pid=virtualpc) might allow SIMION to be run on an older PowerPC-based Mac, but it would not be expected to run at native speeds. There have been a few unconfirmed reports of using Microsoft Virtual PC, but we are not aware to what extent this works. We believe there was some annoyance with the mouse in the Modify screen in SIMION 7 (if there are issues, SIMION 8 may very well run better there). CPU emulators generally cause a good performance decrease, and this would not be an ideal setup for a computationally intensive application like SIMION; however, it could be sufficient for some things.

Option #4: Native compilation of SIMION to Mac OS binaries is currently not provided, nor is it much a development priority because CrossOver Mac on Intel Macs is expected to be a very suitable option, so time/effort is likely better spent on other things. In theory, it would be possible to compile a non-GUI version of SIMION 8 (with only the command-line interface) under GCC without much difficulty, and this is an option in the future. In theory, it would also be possible to compile a GUI version of SIMION 8 as well since the SIMION 8 GUI is migrating to a cross-platform framework, but it would likely require some porting effort in practice (it still has Win32 code), and that effort if at all may well instead go elsewhere.

Any further reports, screenshots, or tips on running SIMION under Mac OS would be much appreciated!

[*1] Thanks to Ryan Ringle at TRIUMF for initial reports of running SIMION 8.0.x under CrossOver Mac (2007-02).

SIMION 8.0.x under CrossOver Mac. From Ryan Ringle/TRIUMF. 2007-02.

[*3] Thanks to Elizabeth MacDonald for initial Parallels report. Related discussion: [3] (http://www.simion.com/discuss/viewtopic?p=1810).

SIMION 8.0.3 and SL Tools under Intel MacBookPro (combined screenshots), 2007-08. From Elizabeth MacDonald.