A while ago I went looking for alternatives to MDL Chime on Mac OS X, as MDL is still choosing not to support OS X. Sure, you can run it in Netscape 4.x in Classic mode, but that’s getting increasingly frustrating. What’s great about the Mac, however, is how many great solutions there are from small developers who take on the “big guys” and do it better. Evidence: Piotr Rotkiewicz’s iMol.
iMol is a free molecular visualization application for Mac OS X operating system. The program is an indispensable tool for chemists and molecular biologists. iMol allows loading molecules using several file formats: PDB, XYZ, MOL2, HIN, CAR, ALC, BIO. The molecules can be saved as PDB, XYZ or BIO files. The BIO file stores all view and rendering settings (e.g. colors, lighting, orientation of molecules). iMol can easily handle both small and large molecules, it can load multiple molecules, move and rotate them independently.
There are more solutions for a bunch of platforms listed at YeastGenome.org. Nine of the listed apps are stand-alone, six can be used as plug-ins, and most (all?) will read PDB files.