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Apple Macs

Our software is Windows based. However, several customers report sucess in running our software on a Mac using Wine or some similar system designed to run Windows software on a Mac. 

You could use Boot Camp to install Windows on your Mac. However, you would have to purchase a copy of Windows from Microsoft, and you would have to reboot your computer to switch to Windows in order to run Support Master.There are other commercial solutions which we have not tried.

We recommend Wine. It is a free, open source solution which allows you to run a Windows based program on a Mac without rebooting. We have tested this on a MacBook Pro and it works great. We followed an online tutorial by David Baumgold:  https://www.davidbaumgold.com/tutorials/wine-mac/

You need to have OS X 10.9 or above. You need an admin account with a password. To run Support Master, you need to have at least one printer installed. The printer does not have to be connected to the Mac, but it must be installed on the Mac.

Here is a summary of the steps listed in the tutorial. The tutorial itself goes into much greater detail. Warning: Some of the longer command strings in the tutorial do not fully appear on the screen, at least not on the screen in the Safari browser on the Mac I was using. If you copy and paste those longer strings, you can obtain the full strings. The full strings did appear on a PC running Chrome.

Step 0: Install Xcode. This is a free download from the App Store. It is big though, 4.47 GB. It took a full hour for me to download at about 10M bits per second. And a few more minutes to install.

Step 1: Install Homebrew. Open the Terminal and run this command: ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"  
Then run this command:  brew doctor

Step 2: Install Homebrew Cask. Run this command:  brew tap caskroom/cask

Step 3: Install required casks. Run this command:  brew cask install java xquartz

Step 4: Install Wine using Homebrew. Run this command:  brew install wine

Step 5: Install Windows programs using Wine. You will need to download the setup file for Support Master. It should then be in your Download folder. It will have a name something like this:  IN-setup-2016.exe
            Navigate to the Download folder and run the setup program. Run this command:  wine IN-setup-2016.exe
            Of course you should substitute the actual name of the setup program you have.
This should run the setup program for Support Master. On my system, I could not see the choices which are supposed to be displayed including "No Questions Asked" installation. But I just hit Enter and it did install.

Step 6: Run Support Master using Wine.
            First navigate to the program folder using cd. Run this command: cd ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/
Note that the folder called .wine starts with a dot and is not ordinarily listed by ls. You have to use ls  -la  to see it.
            Also note that "Program Files" has a space in it. You have to put a backslash before the space like this "Program\ Files"
You are not done yet.  Support Master is in the folder called Professional Software Corporation/Indiana Support Master/
            Put backslashes before the spaces:   cd  Professional\ Software\ Corporation and cd Indiana\ Support\ Master
            After you have navigated to that folder, the command ls should show the Support Master .exe file
Run it using Wine. For Indiana, the command is:   wine SUPPORTMASTER.EXE

Step 7: Make an icon, so you do not have to do step 6.
           Open Script Editor
           Make a script like this:

           tell application "Terminal"
           do script "/usr/local/bin/wine  ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\\ Files/Professional\\ Software\\ Corporation/Indiana\\ Support\\ Master/SUPPORTMASTER.EXE"
           end tell

           Note: In Script Editor, you need TWO backslashes before each space in a pathname.

           Now Export this script and you should have an icon which you can simply use to run Support Master just like you run any other program on your Mac.