Finally, My Apple MacBook Can Do MetrobankDirect!

First off, let me just reiterate how much I love my Apple MacBook (and my Apple iBook before that) and using those machines is a real joy considering the amount of exasperation and frustration I often get whenever I use a Windows machine. However, despite of praising my laptops to high heavens, there's still one thing that it can't do: transact with the internet banking facility of my most favorite bank in the whole wide world.

To solve that problem, I opted to install Parallels and run Windows in my laptop. This seems like an overkill solution to a seemingly simple problem but since I also work in a Windows-centric company, running Windows from within a virtual machine on my laptop gives me additional advantages. Through the windows installation within Parallels, I can do my internet banking transactions in the comforts of my own laptop but I find it rather tedious to boot up Windows just to do a balance inquiry online.



Enter Crossover Mac -- a product by CodeWeavers. This is a derivative of the original WINE project the objective of which is to run Windows-based programs from withing a *NIX (UNIX, Linux, etc) environment. After downloading and installing Crossover Mac, I was able to easily set up Internet Explorer 6 on my computer. After a long installation routine (the IE6 installation file had to be downloaded from the 'Net), I was pleasantly surprised to see my bank's internet banking facility running from a native Apple window!



Crossover Mac costs around $60 (a little less than Php 3,000). A cost that may be well worth it for Mac users who depends a lot on online banking transactions.