Running RootsMagic on a Macintosh

RootsMagic is a very popular genealogy program for Windows. However, one of the common questions asked of the developers is, "Do you make a version for Macintosh?" The answer has always been "no" but recently has changed to, "Well, sort of..."

Actually, RootsMagic has always worked well on a Macintosh if the Mac owner first added virtualization software. I wrote about that several times over the years. However, the RootsMagic web site has a new page that gives further details for the Mac user. The following is a copy-and-paste from http://www.rootsmagic.com/mac/:

Do RootsMagic, Personal Historian, Family Atlas, or your other products run on a Mac?

Yes – but with help. In fact, we have many happy Mac users of our software. However, all of our software is currently designed to run on Windows operating systems. That’s where “the help” comes in.

What do you mean by “Help”?

All Macs built since 2006 use the same microprocessors as Windows PCs. This means that you can install the Windows operating system on your Mac and run any Windows software. There are also other non-Windows options available.

The web site then goes on to list several products that provide the needed "help." Actually, I know of one more product that is not listed on the web page. I use VirtualBox to run RootsMagic on my Macintosh systems and it works perfectly, even though it is not listed at http://www.rootsmagic.com/mac/. VirtualBox is available free of charge but does require a copy of Microsoft Windows in order to run RootsMagic.

I would update the chart shown on http://www.rootsmagic.com/mac/ to include the following:

Product	Cost	Run Mac & Windows at Same Time	No Windows CD Required	Tech Support by Manufacturer
Apple Boot Camp	Free			X
Parallels Desktop	$79.95	X		X
VMWare Fusion	$79.95	X		X
Wine	Free	X	X
CrossOver Mac	$39.95	X	X	X
VirtualBox	Free	X