- Boot Camp Assistant is a multi boot utility included with Apple Inc.' S macOS (previously OS X) that assists users in installing Microsoft Windows operating systems on Intel-based Macintosh computers. The utility guides users through non-destructive disk partitioning (including resizing of an existing HFS+ or APFS partition, if necessary) of their hard disk drive or solid state drive.
- Apr 04, 2020 How to Install Mac OS X on PC. If you want to install Mac on PC, you have two basic options how to do it: you can either install the Mac OS X operating system directly on a drive or use a Mac emulator for Windows. The former option gives you the best performance you can get, while the latter option is a lot simpler.
- Jan 18, 2019 macOS does have built-in support for Windows called Boot Camp. This feature let you turn your Mac into a dual-boot system with both macOS and Windows installed on it. But if you just need to get Windows up and use a particular application, using a Windows emulator will be a better solution and save a lot of hassle.
How to start up in macOS from Windows
- From the notification area on the right side of the Windows taskbar, click to show hidden icons.
- Click the Boot Camp icon .
- From the menu shown, choose Restart in macOS.
If you haven't installed the latest Boot Camp updates, you might get the message ”Could not locate the OS X boot volume.'
Boot Camp 5.1 includes several Mac drivers so that Windows will recognize your trackpad, Thunderbolt, USB 3.0, the iSight (or FaceTime) camera, the Eject key on the Mac keyboard, networking, audio, graphics, and so on. A Boot Camp Control Panel for Windows and an Apple Boot Camp system-tray item will be added. There is no user interface. CSM-BIOS builds the boot device list on the fly based on what is currently plugged in. Acperry7 wrote: In light of that, I made a system repair disc in the form of a usb; however, now I can't get into the BIOS menu in order to change the boot order to boot the usb in the first place. Boot into OS X.
Cooke coat of arms download for windows. Or use Startup Manager as your Mac starts up:
- Restart your Mac from the Start menu in Windows.
- Press and hold the Option (or Alt) ⌥ key as your Mac begins to restart.
- Select your Mac startup volume (Macintosh HD) in the Startup Manager window, then press Return or click the up arrow:
How to start up in Windows from macOS
- Use Startup Manager to choose your Windows (Boot Camp) volume during startup.
- Or select your Boot Camp volume in Startup Disk preferences, then restart.
Learn more
- If you're having difficulty using VoiceOver or another screen reader to complete these steps, please contact Apple Support.
- Learn how to install Windows 10 on your 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.
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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