Allow Mac To Play Desktop Games

Unable to play any games on Windows 10 I upgraded to Windows 10 from Windows 8.1 yesterday and everything went fine until I wanted to play on my games. I tried Sim City 4, The Sims 4, Rome: Total War and Rome: Total War - Barbarian Invasion, and they all came up with an admin prompt to play it but when I clicked on Yes, it hasn't done anything. Jul 20, 2019 How to Install Software from Unsigned Developers on a Mac. This wikiHow teaches you how to install software that isn't approved by Apple on your Mac. MacOS Sierra marks most unofficial apps as unsigned software, so you'll need to perform.

The Mac App Store makes it easy to buy software for your Mac: Find the app you're looking for, click on the 'Buy' or 'Get' button, and it downloads to your Applications folder, ready to be opened. When it comes to third-party apps, however, you may need to run an installer application or open a disk image to install your app on your Mac.

Downloading third-party apps safely

Unlike the iPhone and iPad, the Mac can run software that's been downloaded from any source, though OS X's default security settings will only allow you to run apps that have been downloaded from the Mac App Store and from 'identified developers'—developers who have a digital certificate from Apple on file. It is possible to change these settings, if you'd like to take your Mac's security into your own hands.

Regardless of your Mac's security preferences, however, it's a very good idea to limit your downloads only to trusted sources. Some sites look legitimate but offer software that has malware or adware included in it; installing packages from these sites may change the behavior of your web browser and worse. Even if you do end up with adware installed on your Mac, it's not the end of the world.

As a rule, please make sure the web site you're downloading from is legitimate: Make sure it's the vendor's actual site, for example, or go with a third-party service you trust (like Steam or Macgamestore.com for downloading games, for example).

Mac Desktop Computers

How to install third-party apps on your Mac using .dmg installers

Visit the vendor's website, or a software collection site you trust (i.e. Steam).
Click on the download file link, and Safari will begin to download the app. By default, the file will end up in your Downloads folder.
Open your Downloads folder in the Dock (or go to the Finder, open a new window and click on Downloads in the sidebar). The file ends in .dmg and will look something like this.
Double-click on the .dmg file. The .dmg file is a disk image. Once the disk image opens, open the Installer app within it. Your Mac may tell you that the installer is an application downloaded from the Internet, and ask you if you're sure you want to open it. Click the Open button.
Follow the directions given by the installer to complete installation.
After you're done, make sure to drag the installer disk image into the trash can to unmount it from your Mac desktop.

Depending on what the application does, some app makers just provide the application itself to download. If you see an application icon in your Downloads folder, just drag it into your Applications folder before you try to open it.

(PRODUCT)RED

Apple is now redirecting (PRODUCT)RED purchases to COVID‑19 relief fund

Now through September 30, Apple is redirecting 100% of a portion of (PRODUCT)RED purchases to the Global Fund’s COVID‑19 Response.

The Mac has plenty of games, but it'll always get the short end of the stick compared to Windows. If you want to play the latest games on your Mac, you have no choice but to install Windows .. or do you?

There are a few ways you can play Windows games on your Mac without having to dedicate a partition to Boot Camp or giving away vast amounts of hard drive space to a virtual machine app like VMWare Fusion or Parallels Desktop. Here are a few other options for playing Windows games on your Mac without the hassle or expense of having to install Windows.

GeForce Now

PC gaming on Mac? Yes you can, thanks to Nvidia's GeForce Now. The service allows users to play PC games from Steam or Battle.net on macOS devices. Better still, the graphic power of these games resides on Nvidia's servers. The biggest drawback: the service remains in beta, and there's been no announcement when the first full release is coming or what a monthly subscription will cost.

For now, at least, the service is free to try and enjoy. All supported GeForce NOW titles work on Macs, and yes, there are plenty of them already available!

The Wine Project

The Mac isn't the only computer whose users have wanted to run software designed for Windows. More than 20 years ago, a project was started to enable Windows software to work on POSIX-compliant operating systems like Linux. It's called The Wine Project, and the effort continues to this day. OS X is POSIX-compliant, too (it's Unix underneath all of Apple's gleam, after all), so Wine will run on the Mac also.

Wine is a recursive acronym that stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator. It's been around the Unix world for a very long time, and because OS X is a Unix-based operating system, it works on the Mac too.

As the name suggests, Wine isn't an emulator. The easiest way to think about it is as a compatibility layer that translates Windows Application Programming Interface (API) calls into something that the Mac can understand. So when a game says 'draw a square on the screen,' the Mac does what it's told.

You can use straight-up Wine if you're technically minded. It isn't for the faint of heart, although there are instructions online, and some kind souls have set up tutorials, which you can find using Google. Wine doesn't work with all games, so your best bet is for you to start searching for which games you'd like to play and whether anyone has instructions to get it working on the Mac using Wine.

Note: At the time of this writing, The Wine Project does not support macOS 10.15 Catalina.

CrossOver Mac

CodeWeavers took some of the sting out of Wine by making a Wine-derived app called CrossOver Mac. CrossOver Mac is Wine with specialized Mac support. Like Wine, it's a Windows compatibility layer for the Mac that enables some games to run.

CodeWeavers has modified the source code to Wine, made some improvements to configuration to make it easier, and provided support for their product, so you shouldn't be out in the cold if you have trouble getting things to run.

My experience with CrossOver — like Wine — is somewhat hit or miss. Its list of actual supported games is pretty small. Many other unsupported games do, in fact work — the CrossOver community has many notes about what to do or how to get them to work, which are referenced by the installation program. Still, if you're more comfortable with an app that's supported by a company, CrossOver may be worth a try. What's more, a free trial is available for download, so you won't be on the hook to pay anything to give it a shot.

Boxer

If you're an old-school gamer and have a hankering to play DOS-based PC games on your Mac, you may have good luck with Boxer. Boxer is a straight-up emulator designed especially for the Mac, which makes it possible to run DOS games without having to do any configuring, installing extra software, or messing around in the Mac Terminal app.

With Boxer, you can drag and drop CD-ROMs (or disk images) from the DOS games you'd like to play. It also wraps them into self-contained 'game boxes' to make them easy to play in the future and gives you a clean interface to find the games you have installed.

Boxer is built using DOSBox, a DOS emulation project that gets a lot of use over at GOG.com, a commercial game download service that houses hundreds of older PC games that work with the Mac. So if you've ever downloaded a GOG.com game that works using DOSBox, you'll have a basic idea of what to expect.

Some final thoughts

In the end, programs like the ones listed above aren't the most reliable way to play Windows games on your Mac, but they do give you an option.

Of course, another option is to run Windows on your Mac, via BootCamp or a virtual machine, which takes a little know-how and a lot of memory space on your Mac's hard drive.

How do you play your Windows games on Mac?