chess software...

Hi all...

I'm thinking of buying some sort chess program to help my game/keep me occupied.
I only play online here, as none of my friends play chess :-/

I've heard of fritz, chessmaster, shredder etc. Just wondering which is best?
The other thing is... I've got a macintosh computer (OSX), not a PC.

Finally. The MAC computer I have, it comes with a chess application installed, but it's crap, it just grabs, grabs, grabs... and doesn't play a good game. Are all chess programs like this? Or are the above mentioned ones any better/worth buying?

Cheers n' thanx!

Jason.

I have both chessmaster7000 and Fritz7.
Pros and cons:
- Chessmaster has a good tutorial for beginers. You can set up players with different styles to play again. Unfortunatly the software itself sucks. It hangs often, even the latest patch didn't help. Many years ago I had an earlier version but it didn't run on Windows XP. No patch or any support from developers. (both offical copy not pirated version)

Fritz is good to analyze games, search databases and play online on playchess.com (realtime). The user interface is not so fancy but never had a hickup with the software. You can load different chess engines and it has coaching options.

fritz sounds like the one so, is it available for MAC?

I've not got fritz or junior or hiarcs etc but I've got the free GNUChess. GNUChess 4 is quite human like at at shorter time controls and can be walloped.

I have chessmaster 4000 an 10, and recently got a copy of Fritz9,
the programs are very diferent, and CM 10 is very stable, never had troubles with it, because of the training mode, tutorials wich are spoken by josh waitzkin, personalities, and a lot of features I recomend chessmaster, if you want to have fun and learn a lot.

Fritz seem to be a better engine, but anyway I wouldn't defeat chessmaster, I I dont want it for competence, the analysis Chessmar gives is great, even spoken, so I think its better, and also because of the user interface.

If your just looking for a sparring partner, I would recommend you get ChessMaster 10th. It has some decent teaching stuff. Make sure you don't have certain types of CD copying software, or it won't work(there so paranoid about piracy)

From what I've heard, Fritz is better if you really want to use a computer to improve your chess, instread of just practicing.