It used to be that Windows PCs ran on Intel (or Intel-style) processors – descendants of the Intel 8088 CPU that powered 1981’s original IBM PC – and Macs ran on totally different hardware – initially on CPUs descended from the Motorola 68000 used by the original 1984 Macintosh and later on IBM/Motorola PowerPC processors. But there are lots of games that won’t work that way.įace it – for many Mac users there are times when it would be handy to be able to run something in Windows. Then there are gamers – yes, there are games for Mac (and for iOS), and platforms like Steam make many games available cross-platform. Web designers will need to see how their page designers are going to look when running in Windows browsers. Small businesses needing accounting software remain poorly served if they’re running Macs, for instance – especially if their accountant wants them to produce data that can be read by Quickbooks or Sage Accounting. But with virtualization and other technologies, we’re a little bit closer than would otherwise be the case.īut don’t I already have everything I need or want on my Mac? Like the peaceful utopia in John Lennon’s Imagine, we’re not there yet. Wouldn’t that be great? Read and edit old word processor files – MacWord, anyone? WordStar? Run PC games on your Mac, Super Nintendo games on your Windows PC? Imagine if you could seamlessly open any document and run any program on your computer.

Wordstar emulator mac