windows emulator mac

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Run Windows Programs On Mac

Windows designed by Microsoft Corporation has long been in competition with Mac OS X designed by Apple in the arena of commercial operating systems. While Windows OS can be installed on various computers manufactured by different companies such as Dell, Samsung and Acer, Mac OS X is exclusively available for Apple computers.

Due to this restriction, more software developers favored software creation for the Windows OS more than the Mac OS X. Nonetheless, the Mac OS X has a considerable fan base owing to the fact that it is less susceptible to bugs and viruses, hence, the need to run Windows programs on Mac.

Windows OS is based on an entirely different kernel to Mac OS X. Thus, to run Windows programs on Mac, an emulator must first be installed on the host operating system.

There are a number of Windows emulators available for use in the Mac OS X and the setup is typically similar. A very common example is Wine, which is a free and open source application.

Unlike a full-blown emulator which can take up a lot of computer resources such as memory and processor power, Wine strategically acts as a mediator that stands in between the Windows program and the Mac OS X. It simply handles requests from the running program to be provided by the host operating system.

Installation of Wine is just similar to the method of installing usual Mac OS programs. Preferably, Wine is installed using MacPorts to make the process much easier.

Once installed, the computer is now ready to run programs written for the Windows OS. A program in Windows uses the *.exe filename extension.

To run Windows programs on Mac, the user will have to initiate the process through the Terminal. For instance, the command wine program.exe entered on the Terminal will launch the executable Windows file named program and run on the Mac OS X environment.