If you go to “Program Files” I’ve installed a few applications here. Let’s see here. It actually
works, friends! Hey friends and welcome to Nomadic Dmitry channel. Today we are going to talk about
running Windows applications on your Mac. Historically that have been many methods of
achieving that goal. For example, one of such options was running application in a virtual
machine such as Virtual Box, VMWare or Parallels. The second options was running those on a BootCamp
partition which is a Windows separately installed on your hard drive. But there has been always one
other option which is running those applications natively on your Mac OS computer. To achieve that
we need to look at the project which is called “WINE” and if you are coming from a Linux world
most likely you are familiar with this method of running Windows applications on Linux. It played
an important role in Linux community in 1990s in the beginning when people started thinking
about running Windows applications on Linux. “WINE” project implemented the Win32 API from
scratch and it was an open source right from the beginning. People now had the option of running
their favorite applications on Linux. Eventually it was ported to other platforms such as BSD
and Mac OS since it became Unix-based too in the beginning of 21st century. There are
multiple solutions to run Windows applications on your Mac. The main option is “WINE” which is the
base of all other projects. You can download that from the official website, but I prefer other
methods which we are going to talk about. Those methods are more convenient and less complex.
I prefer the software called PlayOnMac. You can download the binary from the official website.
As you can see it also has a comparison table of all the tools available
to achieve that goal. And now we know that Bootcamp is not an option
anymore because in 2020 Apple announced that there will be no more Intel Macs after a couple of years
and they are moving towards Apple Silicon chips. Basically we have less and less options every day
when it comes to running Windows x86 software. The world is changing and changes too. I prefer
PlayOnMac, but there is also CrossOver (commercial product) and it seems to work on Catalina and Big
Sur as well. I prefer using Mac OS Mojave because this OS supports running old 32 bit software and
that includes running products based on “WINE” without problems. Mac OS Mojave in my opinion
is the best operating system Apple has created in terms of compatibility and stability. For example,
I can still use iMovie 6 on my Mojave system which is great. You might has similar reasons
to stay on Mojave to run Microsoft Office 2008 or later. Initially there was a problem with
all those solutions since it didn’t supported running “WINE” apps and it took some time to fix
that compatibility issue. Somehow they managed it now and it works better, but I still feel like
the support is not great when it comes to booting old Windows application on your Mac machine. I
still feel like Mojave is the best option. Another option is a “WineBottler” and this
application has approach similar to a product called “Cider” which packages the whole
application in one package and you can launch it easily. This is also a good option to consider.
It works on versions of Mac OS up to Mojave, as you can see it doesn’t support Catalina
or Big Sur. Windows game developers used the app called “Cider” to package their applications. When
you open PlayOnMac you are presented with this dialog and you can configure and add applications
there easily. You are able to start your favorite applications right from that menu. When you create
a new application configuration it creates the instance of Windows 32 API behind the scenes to
accommodate that specific application. You are able to run applications right from that box
easily. I have 2 applications installed here, but in reality there are more because “Total
Commander” includes additional applications there. It’s not exactly two applications,
but rather 2 instances of “WINE” Win32 API. You can configure those instances
by opening the registry editor or file browser on that specific instance. Let’s run the application.
Now we are able to navigate the file structure. Everything looks like it’s Windows,
but it’s not. All applications look like Windows applications, for example you can open notepad and
other apps that you got used to on Windows. I installed additional applications to “Program
Files” folder such as Winamp, foobar 2000, mIRC, WinRAR, Notepad++. Installers also look like
the ones from Windows, obviously. You can either install all apps separately as different
instances. But in my opinion it makes sense to install all those in one place. There is also
an implementation of “WINE” version of Internet Explorer. It’s not exactly Internet Explorer,
it’s more like a similar browser, but open source. We can also open WinAmp and use it there.
You can also install Microsoft Office or any other app that you want. Foobar is also a nice music-player available and it works here. But beware that not all software might work under
“WINE” implementation and you might need to see for yourself before deciding if it’s worth
the effort. I also installed WinRAR to be able to work with archives. mIRC is another option
here for chatting using IRC protocol. And also, if we look around “Windows” folder we can see
interesting stuff there as well. It’s an amazing job done by “WINE” team who developed that
project. The main problem that we have now is that Apple is not interesting in supporting efforts
like that and with every release of new OS the compatibility problem becomes more and more
severe. That’s all I have to say today. Thank you guys for watching and please subscribe!