“PC games: they can be the bane of a Mac gamer’s existence,” Rob LeFebvre reports for Cult of Mac. “The Mac may be a better computer than a windows box, but even so, most games don’t support OS X. Even on Steam, the leader in cross-platform computer game support, most games run only on Windows. The reasons for this are manifold, including mid-level integrated graphics chips and less customizable hardware, but it shouldn’t be this disparate.”
LeFebvre reports, “There are a few options for running those PC games on Macs, of course. There’s Boot Camp, which allows you to run a full copy of Windows right on your Intel-based Mac, but it requires a reboot to switch between OS X and Windows environments, which can be tedious. There are emulators you can buy, like Parallels and VMWare Fusion, but these never quite pan out, in my experience, as they always seem to be fraught with issues when connecting peripherals, mice, etc. They also cost a bit, and require a full copy of Windows, which will run you some money, too.
“I just want a way to play a game that is created for the Windows operating system on my Mac, without a reboot, without buying a new program or new copy of an operating system I really don’t want to use,” LeFebvre reports. “Luckily, there’s a way to do just that. Wine actually runs as more of a translator between the instructions in the PC program and the Mac operating system. It basically fools Windows into thinking they are running in a Windows environment, without actually emulating that environment…”
Read more in the full article here.
Being the cheap bastard that I am, I tried using Wine to emulate Internet Explorer in its own shell because I didn’t want to invest in the cost of buying a copy of Windows 7 to install in my Mac just for the sole benefit of having IE.
But no matter how hard I tried I came up against a wall of IE not being able to upgrade itself to a usable form. By upgrade I mean point upgrades to the program (app) that MS releases so making it incompatible with the corporate website I was trying to view.
There’s a benefit to having IE?
Given the choice, I would use Safari over IE any day of the week. But due to IT doofuses, certain corporate websites are accessible only through IE.
Yep. I face the same problem, BLN. Several organization web sites require either IE or a very old version of FireFox (v3.6). Sometimes Safari or a newer version of FF will work, but not always. We are still dealing with the Microsoft legacy of non-standard web coding.
Use the User Agent from the Develop menu in Safari to emulate any browser.
I use it all the time at work and on Government websites.
To enable the Develop menu is Safari, go to the Safari’s preferences and in the Advanced tab, check the check box beside “Show Develop menu in menu bar.”
Works every time for me.
Oh. What a damn shame 🙁
Me too. Our company is 100% Mac, but we have ONE SaaS vendor who requires IE to access back-end admin functionality. VMWare Fusion and a copy of Win7 just so I can change a lost password or create a new user. $#! design work.
One can also run Windows applications natively on an Intel-chipped Mac without installing a Windows emulation or rebooting to a separate Windows partition AND without command-line work by using CrossOver:
http://www.codeweavers.com/products/
Crossover is a much more finished port of Wine than the version described in the article.
Wine and crossover are still too geeky for prime time. You still have to fiddle with obscure concepts, bottles?, before you can get anything done. After that you’re in Windose driver hell. Personally I gave up trying to get crossover to work after a couple of hours of being told, or having to google up, ever more separate pieces that needed to be installed and configured.
And neither one of them work that well. You are still better off running boot camp. Crossover and Wine only run a limited amount of games, most of them older too.
All the games are available for Windows?
Tell me again – which is the toy OS?
Hihi.. That’s funny.
Ah, CoM.
There’s nothing funnier than a man that has a thesaurus but no earthly idea how to use its contents.
Author’s erroneous comment: “switch between OS X and Windows environments, which can be tedious”
No. Less than 1 minute to reboot. Do it all the time. Need a break anyway now and then.
I tried to get wine going and couldn’t. Then again, why do we want to pollute our macs with winblows apps and games. Just get a cheapo winblows box and run games and nothing else on it. End of line.