With the release of Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard", Apple reached another significant milestone in its advanced, UNIX-based operating system. Major enhancements have been made to networking, security, interface design - and performance -and we heartily recommend the new operating system.

As with all major operating system upgrades, changes may impact the performance or usability of existing applications - so it's always advisable to keep your most-used applications up-to-date. If you don't, then you may not be taking full advantage of the financial investment made in your Mac hardware/system.

The current version of CrystalMaker for Mac, version 8.1, takes full advantage of "Leopard", whilst remaining compatible with the previous operating system (Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger"). Key Leopard and Tiger features supported by CrystalMaker 8 include:

• Cover Flow
• Quick Look
• Finder file previews
• Spotlight
• Text editing panel
• Full-Screen mode

In addition to these system-related features, CrystalMaker 8.0 included over 100 new features, compared with the older version 7 (released nearly three years earlier). CrystalMaker 8.1 builds on this, with additional productivity features, new file formats, improved plane/angle calculations - and a great "Live Rotation Link" with SingleCrystal. More information about the new features can be found in our illustrated news section. To find out about specific changes, please refer to the program version history.

Older Version Compatibility

CrystalMaker versions 7 and earlier were developed prior to the launch of "Leopard" and are not recommended for use with this operating system.

Apple has made major changes to all aspects of the operating system, and these may well have ramifications for the performance of your program. In addition, the switch to Intel-based processors makes it vital that you use an optimized version of the program. Please see our sales page for upgrade information.

Specific Issues for CrystalMaker/Mac versions 1-7

• Mac OS X. Mac OS 9 "Classic" is no longer supported by Apple - and the "Classic Environment" does not run on Mac OS X "Leopard". To run CrystalMaker in a Mac OS X-only environment, you will require at least program version 6 or later, and version 8 is required for full Leopard capability (as detailed below).

• Saving Notes. We have identified major changes to text handling on Mac OS X "Leopard", which can affect the ability to save notebook information in CrystalMaker binary files.

• Editing Data. Changes made by Apple to their data browsers (as used by the Edit > Structure, Bonding and Elements commands) means that it is difficult to edit data using older versions of CrystalMaker, e.g., you can no longer tab between data columns, and other operations may no longer work.

• Intel Support. CrystalMaker versions prior to 7.1 are designed only for PowerPC processors. All recent Macs use Intel processors.

  Whilst older versions of CrystalMaker may still run on Intel Macs, this is only because Apple currently provides an emulation capability ("Rosetta") - there is no guarantee that future versions of the operating system will continue this. In addition, the emulation results in very slow performance.

Compatibility Table

	Mac Hardware		Operating System
CrystalMaker	PowerPC	Intel	10.4 "Tiger"	10.5 "Leopard"
8.x
7.1 - 7.2
7.0			?
6.x			?
1 - 5

Key:		Performance verified by us.
		Incompatible.
	?	Not tested. Use at your own risk.

Summary

To take full advantage of modern Mac hardware and operating systems, you must upgrade to CrystalMaker 8 or later. Registered users are entitled to upgrade at special rates - please see our sales page for more information.