Emulator?

[Calinero]

All right, I have a macbook and am attempting to play some PC games such as Bioshock and Half Life 2. Obviously, those don't run on Macs. However, some of my friends have told me that they should run on mine. Others have said that they won't, but I can download an emulator program that will let them. What should I do?

[Silence]

Hmmm..... I don't know too much about this, but I'll point you towards a site that does.

www.google.com

[Rawhide]

Do you have an intel based macbook? What version of the MacOS operating system do you have?

[TheThan]

It shouldn’t be too hard to find a windows emulator somewhere on the ‘net.

[Lord Seth]

There's a port of WINE (Linux program) for the Mac called Darwine, which is a free Windows emulator, but it can be a bit buggy.

There's CrossOver Mac (which isn't free), which lets you use some Windows programs without Windows, but I don't know how well it works other than that it let me install some stuff from Windows CDs onto my computer.

[Calinero]

Yeah, my Mac is Intel based. Version 10.5.1

[Rawhide]

Yeah, my Mac is Intel based. Version 10.5.1

May I suggest... (http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/bootcamp.html)

[Emperor Tippy]

May I suggest... (http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/bootcamp.html)

That does require acquiring a copy of Windows though.

[Calinero]

That does require acquiring a copy of Windows though.

That's what confuses me. What does that mean, having a copy of Windows? I mean, if I had Windows, I wouldn't need an emulator.

[DanielX]

That's what confuses me. What does that mean, having a copy of Windows? I mean, if I had Windows, I wouldn't need an emulator.

If you have a Mac, you need to buy Windows separately. Then, you can use Boot Camp (or maybe another multi-boot system, I don't have a Mac so I can't tell you which bootloaders are compatible).

Since about 2006 or so, Macs have essentially been PCs under the hood (they use an Intel processor, and PC 'parts' in general), the difference being in the software (they come with Mac OS X instead of Windows; a few people have even managed to 'hack' OS X to work on non-Apple hardware). But it doesn't come with Windows, so you have to go and find a copy of XP (probably hard to find now) or Vista (boo! hiss!) and install it. It's not the first time Apple has done this BTW; Mac OS X itself is just bells and whistles on top of a version of UNIX called Darwin (distantly related to BSD), and thus has little in common with the 'classic' Mac OS.

If you don't want to do that, there is DarWine (or plain Wine, if you also install Linux, which you can also install on Macs). But Wine itself only runs a small percentage of Windows programs flawlessly. So if you really want to play games, you need to either shell out a couple of hundred bucks for Windows or be prepared to spend a lot of time tweaking.

[Yarram]

There's a port of WINE (Linux program) for the Mac called Darwine, which is a free Windows emulator, but it can be a bit buggy.

There's CrossOver Mac (which isn't free), which lets you use some Windows programs without Windows, but I don't know how well it works other than that it let me install some stuff from Windows CDs onto my computer.

He should just get Linux. =D

[Ponce]

He should just get Linux. =D

Agreed. Doing a Mac/Windows system is probably the hardest combination. A Mac/Linux or Windows/Linux Multiboot/VM are each much easier. From experience I know that Windows/Linux in particular is very easy. I don't have much experience with BootCamp, but I've heard tiresome news about it.

A 1-second search on google turned up http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Virtual_PC

I'm not a mac user. You can find Windows VMs that run on MacOS. Find one that works for you. Note that using a VM to run high end games can be extremely taxing on your computer. The games may be very laggy if you use one of these "emulators." Note that Wine Is Not an Emulator and does not suffer these drawbacks, but in turn suffers from compatibility and (minor) security issues.