what is best chess engine and gui for mac?

[hgm]

And I also don't know what version of XBoard would work on a MAC, you would have to ask Harm Geert Muller.

The one on WinBoard forum I gave the link to, above.

I think this is even the 4.5.2 version, which is not even officially released yet, because the Mac guy building it takes sources directly from my git repository.

[micron]

Stokfish is UCI and runs with almost any GUI, so I am not sure what you mean.

Stockfish for Mac comes with its own GUI.

[ozziejoe]

so i got rossetta installed and sigma chess opens, but nothign runs. I mean you can click infinite analysis and nothign runs. pathetic..

I mean, if I hit "go" it will run for that exact move, but i can't seem to make a move whilst it analyzes.

Am i missing something here. Surely i can move the pieces and look at the engine analysis without hitting go again and again. Right?

To be clear...i want to turn on infinite analysis. I then want to make moves. for 80 dollars, surely i can do this?

[IanO]

I want to turn on infinite analysis.

Menu Level > Playing Mode and Level... > Select "Monitor" from the Playing Mode popup.

There is also a shortcut icon in the main window status bar for changing the playing mode (click on the second icon from the left).

Ian

[ozziejoe]

ah that did it. thank you!

is there a way to simultaneously view book and engine output?

[hgm]

Stockfish for Mac comes with its own GUI.

Ah. Strange they don't mention that anywhere on the download page.

But I suppose it is still a normal UCI engine, and could be used with any general-puurpose Chess GUI.

[Tord Romstad]

http://www.stockfishchess.com/
The GUI is slightly primitive.

It is not "slightly primitive", it is totally broken, and suffers from so many years of bit-rot that it is far beyond salvation. A total rewrite is necessary. None of the other free or commercial options are close to satisfactory either, although most of them are admittedly better than Stockfish.

I am ashamed on behalf of myself and the Macintosh computer chess community that we still don't have a decent free chess GUI. Something must be done about this.

[javimm]

I have a Mac too, and been using a Mac for two years. I came from the Chessbase GUI and Arena GUI (best interface there is IMHO), and tried to find something similar in the Mac. I have to say there isn't a good equivalent. The best thing I've found is Scid, which is fine but not great. You can load UCI engines with no problems. Sigma Chess is outdated and the Stockfish GUI is very basic.

Xboard, sorry to say that, is a pain to configure, being based on text configuration files. It's a lot of work for what Scid does in 10 seconds with a very basic menu, so I end up not using it.

In the engine department, you have Stockfish, and if you don't care the "clone" engines, I've managed to compile Robbolito, Ivanhoe and Igorrit. All those are very strong and multicore, except Robbolito, which is an amazing engine for single core use.

[ozziejoe]

i agree with these comments. botht he shredder and the hiarcs interface for mac or well below the standard of arena, chessbase and aquairium. sheesh, i now own every major gui on both major platform

I've committed the ultimate mac sin and installed Parellels so that i can return to chessbase

[javimm]

I've committed the ultimate mac sin and installed Parellels so that i can return to chessbase

I have Bootcamp and Parallels installed, but it just bores me to have to boot up in windows or boot up the virtual machine to be able to use an app.

I agree that the Mac should have a good chess interface ala Arena.