Why Macs Cannot Game

11-05-2021 admin

Mar 11, 2016 Macs will play games, but not like PCs. Photo: Killian Bell/Cult of Mac As for whether or not Apple should do more to accommodate gamers, it’s a shame they don’t — but I understand why. There are a number of Mac users emailing us to complain about that they could not install apps or games on their Mac even when they did move it to the Application folder. So, if you are also facing the same problem on your Mac when running software or games on your Mac, then read on this post to know how to fix the “Application Can’t Be Opened on Mac” problem. Jan 16, 2016 Apple's Mac computers may be good at a lot of things, but they aren't the best machines for gaming. Here are some big reasons why they suck for games.

League of Legends, hands down the most popular MOBA ever created, is also having issues with macOS Catalina.

According to Riot Games, the game’s developer, macOS Catalina is possibly preventing new players to install the game. If you already have League of Legends for Mac installed on your machine, you should be fine.

Catalina is the latest version of Apple’s operating system for Mac. Released on October 7, it was supposed to be a great addition for Mac gamers, namely thanks to the introduction of Apple Arcade. Instead, Catalina ended up being a nightmare, especially for users dependent on 32-bit apps.

Another Catalina victim

The list of games suffering from Catalina’s mandatory transition to 64-bit continues to grow. In most cases, the root cause is straightforward: A game is still 32-bit and hence will stop working on Catalina.

However, in the case of League of Legends for Mac (LoL), the problem is vague and unclear:

At this time and with what we know, people will not be able to install League of Legends on their Mac devices on Catalina. So in the meantime, if you know someone who is interested in installing League of Legends, they should do so before Catalina debuts in October OR not update their macOS to Catalina until they do.

Strangely though, if you already have the game installed, you should be fine:

Existing players with League of Legends on their Macs will not have any problems or changes with League of Legends when Catalina rolls out. The game will patch normally and players will be able to play as they have been!

Regarding a potential solution, Riot Games is still investigating the issue:

We do not currently have an estimated timeline for when Catalina will be able to support League of Legends, but we will update players as we get a clearer look at its release date.

In conclusion, if you’re an avid League of Legends gamer on Mac, you better stay away from Catalina for the time being.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time Mac League of Legends users have suffered from a lack of support from Riot Games. For example, Mac users have been suffering from a mic bug that prevented players from using the League voice chat. And that’s only one example.

League of Legends Mac requirements

In any case, if you want to give LoL a shot, make sure your machine meets the game’s official minimum requirements:

3 GHz processor (supporting SSE2 instruction set or higher)
2 GB RAM (4 GB is strongly recommended)
5 GB available hard disk space
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT / ATI Radeon HD 2600 or better
Screen resolutions up to 1920×1200

Like most MOBAs, LoL isn’t particularly demanding and should run on most modern Macs.

Best League of Legends Mac alternatives

Finally, if you’d rather try a MOBA with slightly better macOS support, both Dota 2 and Heroes of the Storm are excellent choices.

If you’re looking for the same type of experience LoL provides, Dota 2 would be a better choice. It’s also famous for its competitive scene, complexity, and harsh community.

On the other hand, Heroes of the Storm may not have a strong competitive presence, but it remains the best MOBA for casual gamers.

Are you a MOBA fan? What’s your favorite MOBA on Mac?

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.