CrossOver Chromium for Mac

Editors' review

by: Download.com Staff on February 27, 2009

This is an unstable port of Google Chrome to the Mac via Wine. The folks at CodeWeavers have successfully built this version of Chromium, Google Chrome's codebase, for non-PowerPC Intel Macs. Unfortunately, it's incredibly buggy, and while it proves that Chrome can eventually run on the Mac, CrossOver Chromium is more about demonstrating the utility of Wine for running Windows apps on a non-Windows PC than creating an effective version of Chrome.

Based on Version 0.2.149.0 of Chromium, a big part of the problem is stability. Type in "nytimes" into the Omnibar and watch Chromium crash. There's a noticeable lag time, probably about half a second, when typing in text fields or even the Omnibar itself. There are also problems rendering images and text, with occasional reports of compressed pictures and misaligned type. The browser also sports the default Windows Vista theme, which is hilarious to see on a Mac, but less effective as an aesthetic. However, ripping a tab off into its own window did work without fail. Hands-down, that's one of the best things about Chrome.

The bottom line is that as an advertisement for Wine--showing how it can run Windows apps without a Windows installation underneath them--this is great. It's not aimed at the casual user, though, so download with caution and don't expect more out of this than it can currently give--which isn't much.