Download Mars24 for Mac OS X

Mars24 requires a computer with a Java 1.4 virtual machine, or better, installed.

Download Mars24

• Mars24 for Mac OS X, 2.8 MB TGZ archive

Install and Run Mars24

Installing Mars24 should just be a simple matter of double-clicking the Mars24OSX.tgz icon on your desktop (but see the installation tip below if you run into trouble). Then drag the Mars24OSX folder to wherever you prefer to keep applications, probably either your user Applications folder or else the system-wide Applications folder.

The Mars24 package for Mac OS X comes as a TGZ archive which can be uncompressed by simply doubleclicking on the archive icon. It contains a folder which holds the following items:

• Double-clickable Mars24 application.
• Equirectangular map file "marsmap.jpg".
• Martian landmarks file "marslandmarks.xml".
• Sample settings files with filename extension ".m24".
• A README file.
• A subdirectory called "help" which includes user documentation.

To run Mars24 on Mac OS X, just double-click on the Mars24 application.

Debugging Installation Problems

If you find that after download and installation, Mars24 for Mac OS X quits immediately after you doubleclick on its desktop icon, the problem may be that you used StuffIt Expander to decompress the archive and that it messed up in doing so. We have had several reports of persons using StuffIt Expander 9.0 to uncompress TGZ archives and creating "duplicate" copies of some files, some of which were zero-length.

To solve this problem:

1. Download a fresh copy of the "Mars24OSX.tgz" archive from the above link. Make sure your web browser does not automatically call StuffIt Expander to uncompress the archive.
2. Single-click on the the TGZ archive icon on your desktop to select the file, and then type Command-I to bring up the "Get Info" panel.
3. In the "Open With" subpanel, switch the menu from StuffIt Expander to "BOMArchiveHelper". BOMArchiveHelper is a service built into OS X itself (or recent versions of OS X, anyway) and it will handle the uncompression correctly.
4. You may want to also click on "Change All" in the "Open With" subpanel.
5. Close the information panel and double-click on the TGZ archive icon.

The TGZ archive file can also be uncompressed from a shell window's command line. cd to the directory where the archive is located and enter:

tar xzf Mars24OSX.tgz