By Malcolm Owen
Tuesday, October 16, 2018, 09:59 am PT (12:59 pm ET)
Feb 27, 2007 Codeweavers CrossOver Mac. Run Windows programs on your Mac without installation of Win 9x, 2000 or XP. With directx support.
CodeWeavers has updated CrossOver, the application for running Windows applications on macOS desktops without using Windows itself, with version 18.0.0 introducing full support for macOS Mojave and numerous minor improvements.
The CodeWeavers team has updated Wine, the core technology behind CrossOver that allows Windows software to run on macOS and Linux, bringing it up to version 3.14. According to the company, the change makes 'thousands of improvements' in CrossOver 18 over previous versions, just from its inclusion.
Among the bug fixes included in the release is a solution to a big that caused Office context menus to disappear from view, while another resolved issue involved a corrupt file error in Office 2016 when installed via Internet Explorer. Bugs relating to the Battle.net client are also said to have been fixed.
While there are changes that help macOS users, the bulk of the improvement in this release fall on the Linux version of the software. While not available to macOS users initially, it is likely the updates will cross over to the Mac version in a future release.
As part of the Linux-specific changes, version 18 includes improved support for DirectX 11 using Wine3D, making Windows games using the API run more smoothly. The Linux release is also the first to be compatible with DXVK, a Vulkan-based Direct3D 10 and Direct3D 11 implementation that can be installed into new and existing bottles using a crosstie.
Linux users also benefit from support for Direct3D 12 via UKD3D, a Direct3D-to-Vulkan translation library. Lastly, there is support for several popular Blizzard games, including World of Warcraft, Overwatch, and Diablo III.
CodeWeavers advise Mac users with active support entitlements will be upgraded to CrossOver 18 the next time they launch the application.
CrossOver 18 for Mac starts from $39.95 for the single version license, with one-year and lifetime versions featuring support and upgrades also available for $$59.95 and $499.95 respectively. Version 18.0.0 works with macOS 10.11 El Capitan and later, and requires an Intel-based Mac with at least 300 megabytes of free disk space and further capacity for Windows applications.
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.
Crossover Mac Download
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.
Codeweavers
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?
Let us know in the comment below!
Updated October 2019: Updated with the best options.
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