Hello,

yday I updated to Safari 12 for Mac  and it doesnt support Silverlight anymore to run the TC 2000 browser version. Also other Browser like Chrome and Firefox dont support it anymore. 

Questions 

1.) Are there any broswer that you know of which still support silverlight to run TC on a Mac?

2.) On my other Macbook I am still running TC 2000 12.4.5235.25989 version as a standalone. Could you please make this version downloadable again so that Mac users can still run TC without Parallels.
Is there a download link for the old standalone Mac version?

3.) What else can you suggest beside Parallels for running TC 2000 on Mac?

Thanks in advance
Patrick
 

I have the same problem with Silverlight and Safari 12. When will there be a solution?

I am not sure we have the old install image available and I am pretty sure the standalone versions required a Silverlight capable browser to install on a Mac even if we do have a copy.

We are looking into other options (I don't know if we will actually be able to come up with something more permanent or not), but there are only two workarounds I know of at this point.

The first option is to have some way to run Windows programs on your Mac such as Boot Camp, Parallels, Xen, VMWare, or Virtual Box. This would allow you to run TC2000 v18.

The last solution (Virtual Box) can be comepletely free of charge when combined with free virtual machine images which are legally available on the MS website. I don't think it is particularly complicated to implement, but it is probably more difficult than either Boot Camp or Parallels and it isn't somthing with which we could assist you.

The second option would be one of several different ways to run MS Internet Explorer in a tab in Chrome. I think all of these are commercial. You can usually use these for limited periods of time without charge, but extrensive use would require a fee to the developer.

I had an online chat with TC today about this.  The bottom line is that there's no practical answer.  Furthermore, there's no indication that TC is working very seriously on the issue, to wit, they quickly offered to refund my recent renewal payment.  The workarounds offered by Bruce L above are impractical:  1--An emulator would require rebooting back & forth from TC to get back to our Safari browsers, spreadsheets, emails, etc.  The suggestion is crazy and makes one realize that the trainers are not investors, which is ok to a point but we're beyond that point now.  2--Virtual Box?  How many of the tens or hundreds of thousands of Mac users can do this?  I certainly can't and the TC folks state that they will not assist us.  3--Run IE in Chrome?  I tried it and can't get it to work and TC won't help, at least at this point.

Considering that TC is several versions behind in the development of the Mac version and they offer not even a hint as to when they'll roll it out, we clearly can't wait for what could be months or years.

I've always considered TC's help chat to be 100% helpful over the last 20 years.  But now it just went to 0% and we are all left hanging out to dry.

I am certainly not saying we will have an answer (because I don't know), but we are working on it. I wouldn't take an offer of a refund as any sort of sign as our refund policies are pretty liberal (and even if this were not the case, you currently can't use the program).

As to the practicality of the suggested workarounds, I think rogerhol is misinformed. Now I do say this without owning a Mac (so rogerhol could be entirely correct), but I also say this having tried at least variations of all of these things in both Linux and BSD (macOS happens to be a derivative of BSD - albeit highly modified).

Boot Camp is just having the ability to boot your computer into either macOS or Windows. So this does have the drawback of having to reboot to switch between using TC2000 and using your familiar programs. I would probably only use this technique if I didn't want Windows contaminating my other OS for some reason (be it practical, philisophical, or a matter of principle).

Then again, this isn't an emulator, it is just having both operating systems installed separately on the same machine. And yes, I haven't used Boot Camp specifically, but I have used this technique to have a lot of operating systems installed on the same computer to different hard drives or partitions.

Emulation is an entirely different thing. When you emulate Windows, you are running Windows basically as its own program in macOS. So at its core, you would have a macOS window with Windows running in it and have TC2000 running in its own window inside Windows.

Emulators (the suggestions given are actually virtualization and not emulation - but this difference is technical and not really apparent to an end user) are usually better than that though. Parallels has Coherence Mode. VMWare has Unity Mode. VirtualBox has Seamless Mode. What do these do? The exact details are different, but these modes all allow you to make it seem more like you are actually running Windows programs as if they are macOS programs. Instead of opening a window containing Windows which has another window containing TC2000, it seems more like you just have a window open in macOS running TC2000.

And VirtualBox is actually pretty simple to install (I am pretty sure my parents could do it). It pretty much installs just like any other program. It is just that you have to decide what recources to devote to it and you then have to install Windows once you have done so (unless you have a pre-built virtual machine image where this has already been done - which is my recommendation if you are trying to go the completely free route since such images are legally available for free from the MS website). Seriously, watch some videos about installing and using VirtualBox on YouTube and you will see what I mean.

That said, Parallels is a more polished commercial program specifically devoted to running Windows on a Mac. It is designed for Mac users who are used to only using Macs. The disadvantage compared to VirtualBox is pretty much just that isn't free.

Compare this to the other options which are designed to virtualize any operating inside any other operating system. There are going to be some Mac touches in the Mac implementation, but at the heart of it all, these implementations are not Mac specific like Parallels.

There was a way to run TC2000 using WINE at one point (Wine Is Not an Emulutor). It may still be possible, but I haven't been able to locate all of the resources used at the time to give it a try (some of the required projects were abandoned or depricated).

TC2000 12 under Linux!

As to running IE in a Chrome tab. I haven't done that on a Mac either. But I have done it in Windows and Linux. I didn't encounter any issues with this approach. The advantage is that it is the lightest weight workaround at the moment. You don't need to have Windows installed and running anywhere at all.

It felt quite a bit clunkier however (beyond the fact that you are running v12.5 in a browser tab instead of v18 as a standalone application), and unless you barely use TC2000, it is going to cost money as well. The options I found were pretty much monthly fees (plus you may pay $1 or $2 / month for DJ Indexes you might not need otherwise if you were running v18). The other disadvantage is that you are running TC2000 in an old version of IE. If you are just using it to run TC2000, great, but I would not want to just navigate the web in general with it.

If I were going to pay a monthly fee just to run Windows programs, I would probably go with a full cloud based PC instead such as Shadow PC. It is $30 / month, but you could even run a full version of TC2000 on your phone or tablet if you wanted using this solution (but it would be nicer on a Mac desktop). The disadvantages are cost, that it is currently only available on the coasts in the US, and that it requires a pretty good internet connection to use at its full potential. I am not sure what other options might be available, but I know this works from using it.

A lower cost option (at least in the long run) would be to buy a very inexpensive Windows computer. I have an 8" Windows tablet I bought for $50 during a Black Friday sale from the Microsoft store and it runs TC2000 v18 just fine. That doesn't make it an ideal experience. For $50, I don't have a keyboard, so it is entirely point and click and there are quite a few things that work better in TC2000 using a keyboard and mouse. It doesn't have much memory, so I have to use removeable Micro SD cards as removeable hard drives. If I were buying something to run TC2000, I would probably buy something a bit more capable and get at least a BT keyboard. I would probably actually just go with a used Windows laptop.

Bruce, thank you for the detail response.  I'll happily admit to being misinformed, or even uninformed, when it comes to the technical aspects of computers.  I simply use the heck out of them and need them to perform.  I switched to the iMac from PCs about 2 years ago and will never go back because the beautiful machine just sits here and always works and runs 3 huge monitors, unlike any PC ever.  TC is--I mean was--running 24/7 on my iMac and now it doesn't anymore, so we need to get it back up.  It's how we make money and I've never seen a better charting program.

I purchased Parallels some time ago and have been reluctant to install it because it seemed very unlikely that I'd bother to run a Windows program on my Mac if it required that I reboot every time between Windows and iOS.  But your description of the Coherence feature prompted me to read about it on the Parallels website and it does sound promising so I'm going to forge ahead with this approach and report back, here.

Would I be installing TC v18 in the Parallels/Coherence scenario?  If so, then the version update would seem to be an actual and significant improvement in the whole iOS situation in which we're working right now.

As to running IE in a Chrome tab, it didn't work for me. It still wanted Silverlight and would go no further without it.  It would be helpful if TC would figure this out and create a procedure for Mac users to keep us running. 

I'll be baaack.

Yes, you would be installing TC2000 v18 in the Parallels scenario and I do think it is quite an improvement versus TC2000 v12.5.

You could instead run TC2000 v12.5 using MS Internet Explorer (but not MS Edge), but I think you would be better off using TC2000 v18.

I bought & downloaded the latest version of Parallels (v14) and installed it and as part of the process, I opted to have Parallels orchestrate the download of Windows 10.  It was as easy as Bruce said it would be, and so probably his parents really could do it since they're no doubt about my age.  

Then I opened TC in the IE browser within the new Windows OS and downloaded TC version 18.  This went fine so I opened the program, logged in and it proceeded to fetch my TC chart info from the last time I used the program 2 days ago.  Now it's all up & running and it appears that the iOS/v12.5 disaster has been averted.  All the while, I'm keying this forum entry from a Safari tab in iOS on screen 2 while TC is running on screen 3 to my right, just as it has for the last 2 years since I bought the iMac.

Parallels 14 is $80 but I paid $100 for a permanent license.  For the extra $20, you don't have to buy it again for another $80 every year and you can still upgrade every couple of years for about half price.

I'm running a pair of 27" Apple Thunderbolt monitors, one on each side of the iMac's 27" 4K screen. Behind the TC window on screen 3 are a couple of MS Word files that are open and running in iOS.  The whole setup is identical to the way I ran TC v12.5 for 2 years before the recent upgrade that killed off the iOS version of TC.

I currently have 7 Safari browser windows open containing a total of about 60 web page tabs including my brokerage account, plus Outlook email and several Excel & Word files are open.  I've always run expensively equipped high-performance PCs before switching to the Mac and they could never handle this much at once, ever.  The Mac just sits there, totally silent, all inside of the monitor itself and it never glitches in any way.  The thing is just awesome and now it runs TC v18 so I couldn't be happier. 

I had to resize some of the scales, chart notes and watchlist fonts.  No problem.

At this point, I consider the whole TC 12.5 issue to be in the past.  If you run Macs, go do this.  If you run a PC, go buy an iMac so you can stop wasting precious time being a computer tech/hobbyist.  Once you try Mac, you'll never go back.

Does anyone know of alternate software which support the similar scans? Since worden does not care about mac users I think it is time to leave.

It's great to be back up and running, and now using v18 on my iMac.  But there is a serious downside to the new setup:  With v18, you lose your BATS real-time data feed and so you're back to what seems like an absurd situation with delayed data but with the more modern platform.

The obvious answer if you can't stand the 15-min delay is to go back to v12.5.  But then you're running an old version.  If you want the faster data, you gotta fork over another $180/yr, because the BATS feed doesn't work with v18.  It's a very unfortunate dilemma.

I'm not going to spend the extra money, so I went back to v12.5.  I had to download IE of course, and TC requires Silverlight to be downloaded which was no problem.  Then v12.5 came right up running without any problem.   

V12.5 actually runs a little better in the iMac-Parallels-Coherence-Windows-IE setup.  The mouse scrolling functions work properly whereas they never did in Safari.  Of course, BATS real time is back.

If you don't need all the whizbang features of v18, this works just fine and saves money.

I lost my access to TC2000 12.5 on Safari 12, and read the comments above. Some more searching led to the following solution: install the SeaMonkey Browser (i have version 2.49.4) and TC2000 12.5 will function again. I do not know for how lon

Given the number of applications that run on the mac, I would be most interested in finding out what it is about Silverlight that is required to run TC2000 on macs. Surely we could get an answer regarding that question?

    Cheers,

       Gordon

TC2000 is pretty much a Windows program. It is written using Microsoft's Visual Basic .NET (and requires more than just the core functionality for which this development environment can currently output Mac software).

Silverlight is a compatibility layer which was supperted by VB.NET which allows the software to run outside of Windows. So if you can't run Silverlight, you can't run the the version with Mac compatibility (since this compatibility was supplied by Silverlight).

We probably aren't going to be switiching to a different development environment. Even "compatible" environments generally require re-writing 15%+ of the code. Core functionality for .NET developed Mac programs is now available. If and when this expands to include all of the functionality we need, we should be able to create native Mac applications. But I have no idea when or even if this might actually happen.

So at this point, if you can run Silverlight in a browser (and it seems like SeaMonkey works at least for now), you should be able to use TC2000 v12.5. Otherwise, you need some way to run Windows programs in order run TC2000.

I arrived at the same conclusion. The mistake Worden made was not to program for cross-platform compatibility from the start. I have avoided .Net all my life because I work on all platforms. But if Worden does not care about the Mac market because it is minuscule, then the potential loss of profits is inconsequential. This also only applies to the small guy. The big institutions are not affected by any of this. Have a good day!

  Gordon