How to run Windows programs on Mac OS X? How to Run Windows Programs on Mac OS X

Update your Mac OS system. Go to Apple → Software Update... to check that your system is up to date.

Get Parallels. You can purchase Parallels by purchasing a physical copy or downloading a digital copy.

Start the installation process. The installation method will depend on whether you purchased a physical copy or a digital copy:

• For digital copies: Double-click on the disk image file, which will likely be located in your Downloads folder. The file will have the extension ".dmg".
• For physical copies: Insert the installation disc.

The number of applications supported by the macOS operating system is growing every day. However, some software products only work on Windows. There are various ways to run this type of software on a Mac. The most obvious involves installing a virtual machine and creating a new partition on the disk to install full-fledged Windows.

But if you only need one Windows program, then you do not need to install a full-fledged operating system on your computer. MacDigger suggests turning to one of two utilities that solve this problem.

WineBottler

It cannot be said that WineBottler can boast of supporting all Windows applications, but the program’s database contains over 23,000 items. With a high probability, among those that she knows and understands, you will most likely find what you need. Moreover, the advantage of WineBottler is that it is distributed completely free of charge.

WineBottler does not run Windows to operate, but packages applications so that they can run on OS X. All this happens using a special component. To find out if the application you are looking for is on the compatibility list, we recommend going through. There is sorting and convenient search.

You can download WineBottler for Mac on the developers' website. The latest version of WineBottler is compatible with OS X El Capitan and macOS Sierra.

CrossOver

The CrossOver software emulator is considered the best option for running Windows programs on macOS. A big plus of the program is support for the Russian language. Therefore, Russian users will not have any difficulties using it.

CrossOver is developed by CodeWeavers based on the source codes of its free counterpart. Moreover, it itself is a commercial product. The product's creators add their own patches, as well as graphical configuration utilities. The company has hired several Wine developers, and is returning some of its work to the free project.

CrossOver differs from WineBottler in a narrower focus: it is aimed at supporting the most popular office, graphics and other applications. At the same time, compatibility with this software is carefully tested and debugged, so its operation is usually more stable than that of its free counterpart.

The cost is 40-60 dollars. There is also a version of CrossOver Games designed to run popular Windows games on the Mac.

A long time ago, in the 90s, I had a bright dream - to buy a Mac computer. There was little money then, and Apple Macintoshes cost astronomical sums. This was the era when the LC Performa and Quadra appeared. And they appeared, the strangest thing, also in Omsk, thanks to the Makros company.

I liked everything about the Macintosh. A magical interface with windows, a recycle bin and other goodies (while on the PC pure DOS + Norton Cammander dominated). One-button mouse. Workmanship. Assembly without a single bolt. Amazing sound. In general, as soon as my friend and I saw Maki, we immediately became their fans.

And when Valerka Maniac took out the just released game MYST from the branded box and put the disc into the Caddy... That day we saw for the first time a “live video,” as it was called then. It was a Making of Myst video, where the creators talked about the development process of one of the most famous games in their entire history. The game is still on sale and in demand! To say that we were amazed by what we saw is to describe the sensations very dimly. It was youth and freshness of emotions. Apple was still far from being mainstream in Russia, and no one even dreamed of such an abundance of everything that is now on the market.

So, everyone grew up and became uncles, but I haven’t had Mac since then, for various reasons. Of all the Apple equipment, I only owned the iPhone, the very first model, and even then only for a couple of months. Recently, succumbing to a fit of nostalgia, I started searching on the Internet to see if there were any emulators available to run Mac OS under Windows 7?+
It would not be amiss to recall that the same Quadra was able to emulate a PC AT 286 using software back in those distant nineties; I remember Lines was played on a Mac.

But Mac emulation on PC became possible much later.

Why SheepShaver?

After a lot of googling, I came to the conclusion that the best emulator for Apple Power PC with Mac OS is SheepShaver. I don’t remember exactly how I came to this conclusion, but I read a lot of English pages for this. In general, there is not much choice there at all, judge for yourself:

• SheepShaver— for Mac based on PowerPC G4 with the ability to install Mac OS up to 9.0.4;
• Basilisk II- for older Macs based on Motorola 68XXX processors;
• Mini vMac- for even older Mac Plus with System 6 operating system.

These are not all emulators, you can find more, but it was enough for me to understand the following: if I want to try to “teleport” to those very times, then I need SheepShaver. The second task was to find a disk image with MYST and run it on the emulator.

All this turned out to be very difficult, although it was crowned with success. I had to spend the whole day, but why? Yes, because I haven’t found a single sane, adequate description in Russian to set everything up and run. This is precisely the reason why I created this text, what if it helps someone else?

So, let's begin.

Files for Mac OS emulator - SheepShaver Windows

What do we need?

1. Actually, the emulator SheepShaver, SheepShaver graphical shell GUI, and a program for creating a virtual MAC HDD - HFVExplorer
2. Library SDL 1.2 Libraries
3. Plastic bag GTK+ 2 runtime
4. The ROM file is an Apple ROM dump. You need a ROM that supports OS from version 7.5.3
   
5. Everything listed above will allow you to create the virtual Mac hardware. After which you will still need an installation disk with Mac OS. For my tasks (playing around with the operating system and running MYST), a distribution kit was needed System 7.5.3
6. Boot disk DiskTools85_PPC.

In fact, the Basilisk II emulator would have been more suitable for my specific task, but it crashed for some unknown reason. As written above, SheepSaver is an emulator for more recent Macs and Mac OS, starting with 8. Nevertheless, it works great with 7.5.3-7.5.5, but the installation turned out to be much more confusing, since I had to study and compare two different instructions, go through options, make mistakes, and ultimately spend a lot of time to understand what's what .

Everything will be much simpler for you, since now all the files, verified, compatible and functional, are collected in one package. So what you need to do: . One archive, everything included.

Setting up the MacOS SheepShaver emulator

Having all the necessary files, the rest will not be difficult to do. Read the text carefully and follow the instructions.

Congratulations, all settings are done, and when you click the Start button, the emulator should start. The boot disk will warn you about installing the system. Picture below. Feel free to click OK, the simplest thing left is to install System 7.5.3.

After clicking OK, a graphical shell appears. This is not a system yet, as you can see by clicking the coveted apple and selecting from the menu: About this computer. Simply a bootable utility disk designed to install Mac OS.

We go to the disk (disk1), where the System 7.5.3 install files copied to you are located. Double-click the file System 7.5.3 01 of 19.smi. A window with a license agreement will appear, in which you must click Agree. After which the installation program will generate a Sys 7.5 V7.5.3 CD Inst folder on the virtual desktop

Inside this folder we find the Installer file and run it. A splash screen of System 7.5 appears, click Continue.

The installer complains that no installation files were found on the Disk Tools disk. Well, that’s understandable, they are on disk1. Here you just need to click Switch Disk, perhaps a couple of times, until you see the disk with the given name. At the same time, the Install button will become active - the green light for installation has been received. Click Install.

Copying files will begin immediately. We wait until it completes, and when finished, click Quit. The installation is complete, but it’s too early to relax. From the shell's top menu, select Special > Shut Down. We fall out of the emulator and run SheepShaverGUI.exe again. The point is that you need to remove DiskTools85 from the download. Do it as in the picture - select DiskTools85 and click Remove. All that remains is to boot from the HDD. After this, click Start.

And now this is a victory. After the system boots, the EnergyStar window will appear, you can close it, or configure the energy saving settings, otherwise it will pop up every time you boot. But the main thing is that you are now the owner of a virtual Mac. You can easily verify this by clicking on the apple > About this Macintosh, information about System 7.5.3 should appear.

Running MYST on a MAC Emulator

Well, what is the main goal? - someone might ask. Launching MYST? Let's start with the fact that I only found an ISO file in Japanese. I would be grateful if anyone has a lead to a disk image with the original, English MYST. Not reissued. Maybe put it on a torrent?

And the Japanese one, of course, launched. It's simple, you mount the image, for example, in Daemon Tools Lite, after which the MYST icon appears in the emulator instead of the CD-ROM icon. You should go to the disk and copy a couple of folders to the Mac OS desktop, after which you can launch it.

As for youth, unfortunately, you can’t bring it back with an emulator. Even if you buy on EBAY and bring a real Mac Quadra, which now costs a lot of money, it should be noted (thanks to the USD exchange rate and Waldemar Putin personally), then at least there will be more fun, but still. It is no longer possible to bring together Mitya, Valerka Maniac, and all the people who were around in the 90s. And the retail premises in the socio-political center of the city of Omsk, where everything took place, no longer seem to be trading premises. And the OPC itself has long been renamed into RCSO - Regional Center for Public Relations.

P.S.
Those who finished reading and had a need to run a Macintosh emulator under Windows, please leave feedback if possible. Did you manage to launch and configure everything according to the instructions? Is there any more information needed on installing a more recent Mac OS? What is missing in general?

No matter how good Mac OS is, it is still inferior to Windows in one important thing - the number and variety of software. Sometimes there are situations when you just can’t do without some terribly specific program for which there are no analogues in our favorite OS. What should a devout poppy grower do in this situation?

First of all, don’t get upset or scared, because there are at least three ways to solve this problem. Let's look at them one by one.

Boot Camp

It’s not for nothing that Apple is famous for its attention to users, which is why Mac OS X has a built-in program that allows you to easily and quickly install Windows on your Mac. Yes, yes, install Windows. In this case, the operating system from Microsoft will be “next to” your Mac OS (or maybe even replace it completely - but this is an extreme option for ardent haters of the Apple operating system) and in order to gain access to it you will have to restart the computer.

This method is not very convenient if you only need to run Windows programs briefly or work with several applications at the same time, only one of which is not made for Mac OS. But this method will allow you to get maximum performance from your computer or laptop and is therefore ideal for running resource-intensive applications. Such as, for example, games.

In order to use this method, you will need little: just a windows disk. The installation is as simple and straightforward as possible: you need to launch the Boot Camp Assistant, which is located at , after which you will be asked to set the amount of disk space that you will give to Windows. After which you will be asked to insert the Windows CD into the drive and you will proceed with the normal installation of this operating system. It’s very nice that Boot Camp Assistant will download and install all the necessary drivers. After which you only need to reboot and now, you are already working in the good old (or not so good) Windows.

Pros:

• All applications will launch
• Maximum performance

Minuses:

• Need to reboot

Virtual Box - virtual machine

A virtual machine is a kind of computer inside a computer. It is created (it is correct to say “emulated”) using special software. This method is good because it does not require reboots, however, it also has certain pitfalls: your computer will have to simultaneously support two operating systems, so the speed of both may noticeably decrease.

There are several virtual machines available for Mac OS X. These are paid VMware Fusion, Parallels Desktop and free Virtual Box. There are actually more, but these three are the main ones.

The Windows installation process for any of the listed programs is approximately similar. We will consider the option with free Virtual Box. First, let's create a new virtual machine. To do this, you need to launch Virtual Box and click the New button. Next, you need to enter the name of the virtual machine and indicate which OS you want to install there. After that, on one of the screens you will be asked to set the amount of RAM that you want to give to the guest system. Another sticky point can be specifying the maximum size of the data file that your virtual machine will use - this file will be its hard drive.

After the setup is completed, we will see the created virtual machine in the main program window. In order to install Windows there, you need to run it for the first time. Then, using a convenient wizard, specify where the installation will be made from (either a disk with a recorded OS or a disk image on a hard drive will do). After which you can install Windows the same way as on a regular computer.

Pros:

• No need to reboot
• All programs work

Minuses:

• On weak machines, the simultaneous operation of two operating systems can cause “brakes” for both

Wine

This method consists in the fact that a special emulator program runs a Windows application within itself and “translates” the commands it sends to the OS into a language understandable for Mac OS X, and translates the responses received from it into a language understandable to the program.

This approach will not require either reboots or the installation of a full-fledged Windows and works faster than the option with virtual machines - it would seem that it is free of the shortcomings that are relevant for the first two methods. However, not everything is so rosy. Unfortunately, not all programs will work correctly with this approach: some may not even start, and some may glitch during operation. However, emulator programs are constantly being improved, expanding the list of supported applications. Therefore, if the program you need is not too complicated, then you can safely try to run it in an emulator.

The two most common Windows emulation programs are CrossOver and Wine. The first is paid, and the second is distributed free of charge and migrated to us thanks to the roots of Mac OS X, which grow from Unix.

Installing Wine

We will use the free option again. To install, we will need XCode (you can download it from the Mac App Store for free) and the Mac Ports program, which can also be downloaded from the Internet for free, as well as a terminal that is already installed on your system and is located at /Programs/Utilities/.

Once you have installed XCode and MacPorts, open a terminal and type:

sudo port install wine-devel

which will install the latest version of Wine on your Mac (you will need to enter your password). Please be patient, the installation process may take quite some time.

After the installation is complete, you can safely use this program. In order to run the exe file, you need to open a terminal and write in it

wine (leave a space after this word and do not press enter)

after that, drag the file from the finder window into the terminal window (the path to the file will be inserted there) and press enter. It is important not to close the terminal window until you are finished with your program.

Pros:

• Decent program speed
• No need to reboot

Minuses:

• Not all programs will work properly

If you use Apple Mac, iMac or MacBook that run on the Mac OS X operating system, you will not be able to run most programs and applications that are written only for Microsoft Windows operating system. What to do if you still need to run some apps or games Windows, which are not available for the platform Mac OS X? In fact, Mac provides users with multiple options.

Users Mac can download and install Apple Boot Camp Windows, For Mac OS X and they will work on the machine Mac dual boot. Other options Microsoft Virtual PC, which creates a virtual machine (VM) emulating the base Windows machines And Parallels Desktop For Mac. How to install Windows, as a guest operating system in a logical partition with Mac OS X,so that Windows worked together with Mac OS X through emulation or virtualization.
Now you have another option to run Windows programs and applications on Apple Mac OS X, without the need to install a dual boot utility Apple Boot Camp, or any virtual PC and virtual machine virtualization software. CodeWeavers CrossOver Mac is a program that allows users to install and run many Windows programs, games and applications for the operating system Mac OS X on computers MacIntel. CrossOver Mac based on an open source project Wine, which does not emulate, but reuses Win32 API implementations to run Windows applications natively to the target OS. So for launching applications Windows x86 compatible processors (such as Intel or AMD processors) are required, and this explains why CrossOver Mac only supports Intel Macintosh computers, but with the advantage that applications, games and programs will initially run at full speed.

WITH CrossOver Mac, users can handle MacIntel as with a regular PC with Windows operating system. Users can use regular software installation CDs Windows, click the button and launch the application directly from Finder OS X and run the appropriate program for Windows by clicking on the file Windows, or document, including email attachments, so you can work on them directly. CrossOver Mac best of all, operating system licenses Microsoft Windows not required. CrossOver Mac is now available as a free download as a limited-time beta version that expires after 60 days. If you want a free version of the utility that works for Windows applications on Mac OS X, you can use the application Wine, which is created based on CrossOver Mac. Nevertheless, Wine does not support itself Mac OS X. Instead, you can download and install , as well as other supporting tools that allow you to Mac OS X users run Windows applications, without windows, and also provide compatibility with the Win32 API at the application level of the source code. In addition, with Bochs you can run applications for Windows x86 on Mac OS X on PowerPC (PPC). Darwine is still in development, and perliminary files for PowerPC And x86 Macintosh free to download in the Internet.

One of the disadvantages CrossOver Mac and Darwine (Wine), is that not all applications, programs and games are supported. Many applications and games were supported, such as Quicken, Microsoft Project 2000 and 2003, Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Visio 2000, 2002 (XP) and 2003, Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0, 5.5 and 6.0, Lotus Notes R5 and Adobe Photoshop 7.0.