CrossOver Mac allows you to install many popular Windows applications and games on Mac OS X. CrossOver includes an easy to use, single click interface, which makes installing Windows software simple and fast. Once installed, your application integrates seamlessly in OS X. Just click and run your application directly from the OS X Finder. Clicking a Windows file or document — including email attachments — will launch the appropriate Windows program, allowing you to work on the files. Best of all, you do it all easily and affordably, without needing a Microsoft operating system license.

Adding new Windows software is easy. Just place your install CD in your Mac, and CrossOver will recognize it and offer to begin the installation process. CrossOver then completes the installation and configures your application to run on your Mac. That's all there is to it.

Bottle Functionality
A bottle is a virtual Windows environment. Each bottle contains a unique C: drive and all its standard sub directories: Windows, Program Files, etc. A bottle also contains a complete Windows registry, a full set of most CrossOver settings, and one or more Windows applications.

CrossOver allows you to maintain multiple bottles in one CrossOver installation. This is like having several different Windows machines operating together on your computer.

This is useful anytime you want to install multiple applications yet prevent them from interacting or damaging one another. For example: Typically the Internet Explorer 6.0 installer upgrades any existing Internet Explorer 5.0 installation. Using bottles it is possible to install Internet Explorer 6.0 into a new, empty bottle, while leaving an existing install of Internet Explorer 5.0 intact and untouched, thus letting web developers run both simultaneously.

Multiple bottles are also useful anytime a particular application requires special system settings that are otherwise undesirable. It is also possible to maintain bottles that emulate different Windows versions. For example, Microsoft Office 2003 only works on Windows versions 2000 or later, whereas Microsoft Office 97 runs best in a bottle that emulates Windows 98.

CrossOver also makes it easy to backup bottles, and thus all the Windows applications they contain. Backing up a bottle gives you a .cx archive file which you can then restore on any machine, along with all the relevant Wine settings, desktop menus, browser plugins and file associations.