We can generally find four types of games for Mac OS X. We can’t overstate how important it is that you check the type of game you’re getting. The performances partly depend on the way the Mac version was developed. The first type, the rarest, is the games developed for Windows and Mac OS X in tandem, with simultaneous releases. The best example is the Blizzard games: the two versions are given in the game box; there is no Mac OS X/Windows segregation.

The three other types are ported games. They are usually third party, which are specialised such as Aspyr or MacSoft. The first type of port is when the game uses the OpenGL in its Windows version. The port is generally quite simple and the performances very good: the OpenGL is a Mac OS X standard as we’ve stated. The second case is when the original game uses Direct3D: the team which ports the game has to partly modify the rendition engine because Mac OS X doesn’t support Direct3D. Long story short it just means that the performance can suffer. Finally there is the solution recently used by the Electronic Arts games. The company doesn’t really port games but uses an emulator which allows you to use a Direct3D game in a seamless manner in Mac OS X (generally with Cider- Transgaming’s solution). The performances are often a step back, but the porting doesn’t take long and they arrive on the shelves sooner.

Since January 2006 Macs have been using x 86 processors, the same as our PCs in Windows. Before, Apple used PowerPC processors (IBM or Motorola). This can oftentimes be pretty problematic. A certain number of old games only exist in the PowerPC version, while a portion of more recent games only work with Intel processors. In the first instance, the Macs equipped with an Intel processor can run PowerPC programs (with a certain loss in performances of course). The second instance is that the Intel games only work on PCs with Intel processors. Finally, the games which were released between the end of 2005 and 2007 are generally Universal Binary programs: they exist in PowerPC and Intel versions (sometimes requiring a patch).

Of course, there exist other possibilities than using Mac OS X to play on a Mac. Here are three ways you an get around it that we examined for this test.