It’s a common held belief that Mac users do not game – A founded argument or not, there are a growing number of Eve Online Mac users as the platform has become more and more popular over recent years. For a long time the Mac client has been somewhat left behind – only until recently did the mac get a number of updates that brought it more in line graphically with the windows client. But it still does not match up with Windows version, the performance is often painfully slow, and the client is riddled with bugs and glitches. Indeed it was often a better option to partition a Mac’s hard drive and install windows to get the best out of Eve Online. While CCP is working on bringing the client back up to speed – there is still a long way to go.
One of the most common complaints from Mac users was using multiple clients at any one time. While in the windows version it was a simple case of switching to the launcher, entering the log in details and launching a new client. Attempts to do the same on a Mac usually resulted in some frustrating glitches. When running multiple accounts the client would often freeze. If you wanted to quit a session on one of your clients but leave the others running, forget it, because closing one client would cause all the other clients to crash at the same time.
So the only solution to this was using a work around called ‘Clone Maker‘, which separated out clients into their own application.
Four Cloned Eve launchers to run up to four accounts simultaneously.
It was a clunky process to get all these set up and they often needed re-installing when there was a major update, for example when the download on demand was introduced.
The beginning of October saw the launch of the Beta programme for a new Eve Launcher which provided a number of benefits over the original launcher including:-
At that time there was mention of an OSX version of the launcher, but Mac users would have to wait. However, today CCP Logibro posted the following:-
Hello Players
We are pleased to announce that the new beta EVE Launcher is now available for Mac. You can find the installer here. If you are running Windows and haven’t tried the new beta EVE Launcher, you can find it here.
Please remember that the new EVE Launcher is in beta, and is not guaranteed to work perfectly. If you do encounter any issues, please remember to file a bug report to assist us with fixing the problem.
For more information or to discuss the new Beta Launcher further, please visit this forum thread.
So I downloaded the launcher and decided to give it a test.
The download file of the launcher was a small 42.5mb. The installation itself (above) was the usual click and drag icon to folder experience that Mac users are all familiar with. Once it was installed and running it looked identical to the windows version in every way including the addition of multiple accounts.
So here came the acid test, would opening and closing cause the same issues as previously suffered with running multiple eve clients from the same launcher? Thankfully – No, all the clients opened up, could be manipulated and closed individually without it causing the other clients to crash. While I have not had the opportunity to fully test the clients using this new launcher to see if there are any errors there are a couple of known errors at this time including:-
To contribute to the ongoing development of the beta launcher for OSX you can visit the feedback thread here.
