Run a windows based "client" application on a Mac

Hi Frank,

I Only know the existing candidates Parallels and Bootcamp on the Mac. We already tried this out with Sbclient in the past, but had some problems and therefore decided to not support Mac. (we only have to support an inhouse ERP solution why this is not a problem for us).

best regards

Thomas

I'm not actually "MV folks" but Rocket does have a Modern Experience Web product. It works over VT emulation similar to SBClient, but the UI is webpage not windows app. The web pages can be accessed from linux/Mac/tablets/phones(your mileage may vary on small screens though).

This tool is low-code no-code, but to achieve good user experience, some development is indeed required.

Migrating to Modern Experience Web is possible and relatively easy if your emulation is SB+/SBXA Character mode.

Without knowing the nature of the GUI client it is difficult to be definitive, but I have a number of Windows terminal emulators running on my Mac using CrossOver (which itself packages WINE for MacOS). This has the benefit of wrapping the Windows app in Mac-like surrounds. I've attached a screenshot of SBClient running on my Mac in Crossover to give you some idea of what it looks like.

I also have a copy of Windows 11 running courtesy of VMWare Fusion which allows me to run most Windows apps.

Run up a VM on Mac. https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

Crossover/Mac might be an option. AccuTerm is supported on Mac and Linux using Crossover and its probably 99% functional. As Crossover is basically a commercial version of Wine, you could also try Wine, but I have found Crossover to be easier to get working.

At a previous employer, we used Parallels to run Windows apps.  The app shortcuts for the windows apps can be part of the Mac desktop as well.  This was over 15 years ago, SBClient worked for me with no issues. We had a 60/40 mix of Windows & Mac computers being used. Worked very well for us then. 

Just a quick comment on some options mentioned above. I don't believe VirtualBox is really ready for production use on Apple Silicon, so unless we're talking pretty old Macs it is probably not a good solution at this stage. VMWare does work well, but of course the Windows install needs to be ARM based. CrossOver is not native — it runs with Apple's Rosetta2 — but it seems stable and fast nonetheless.