Question for Mac Simmers

victoriae350

I'm getting a Mac within the next year (splitting the cost fifty fifty with my mom and already almost half way towards paying my half :P SO HAPPY!) I wanted to know how the sims 3 and 4 worked quality wise? Since I only have the PC compatible disks, I'm probably going to have to rebuy. But how well do the games work? What kind if apple laptop would you recommend go play the games?

igazor

In both cases, if you own the product on one platform and it is registered, you have the right to download and install the digital version of the other through Origin. There is never any need to repurchase these games only because you are switching platforms.

TS4 for Mac has not yet been released, but your timing is good. It should be out in three days (Feb 17). But no one can really comment on a product they don't have yet.

TS3 for Mac, I'm sorry to say, is an abomination. To be fair, many users do get enjoyment out of that version but EA flubbed the OS X implementation early on and never bothered to fix it. There is a built-in 2GB RAM limitation on that version that cannot be overcome no matter what you do, though there are a lot of tricks you can deploy and tips available to help the game move along without constant crashing and Error12s. They have been created and compiled by the hard working and very generous with their time Mac experts on this very forum.

http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/658546/mac-help-threads-guides-please-start-here-before-posting-a-problem-updated-10-01-15/p1

I put up with it for over a year myself and, when for me Pets and Seasons killed my gameplay completely, gave up and switched over to playing on Windows on a bootcamp partition.

victoriae350

> @igazor said: Thanks! In that case, is there any chance that I could upgrade my graphics card in my Toshiba since my current one is pretty bad? (it's an intel core graphic card). I have to save up for all of this myself, so getting a new graphic card if possible sounds better than buying a new gaming laptop :)

igazor

Oh, I didn't want to talk you out of getting a Mac laptop. They are great for very many things, it's just that playing TS3 on OS X in particular isn't one of them though it's not totally hopeless as described above. We do expect that EA is doing things right/better with the TS4 port, especially since it's taken so long and from all appearances, they aren't doing it all themselves as they did the prior one.

Your current Toshiba is a laptop? That's going to depend on the model. In many cases, the graphics card is permanently fused to the system board so there isn't any real way to upgrade it and in other cases there are cooling issues to worry about with more capable cards.

victoriae350

I'm still getting one :P I'm saving up for one :) I need it for school and i'm sick of always getting new computers because my current one is not working anymore XD

Oh great :( I need to save up for another laptop after I buy my Mac... -.- Thanks for helping! :)

lmwenger21

I have a Mac Air laptop that's about a year and a half old. I've been lucky and have had no problems at all running Sims 3, other than a periodic error12, but that only occurred in one world that had gotten a little "bloated" :P There are a couple of Tawain mods I've found that, when loaded, make it so the game won't load, but they are minor ones that I don't really need.

victoriae350

> @lmwenger21 - Thank you so much for your help! :) I hope that I'm able to upgrade my Toshiba graphics card...if not it's buy a new laptop after the Mac :/

Tremayne4260

We have a help thread in the Mac forums that give all kinds of solutions to the problems encountered with Sims 3.

I don't see a problem with Macs running Sims 4 at this point and will let everyone know after 2/17.

victoriae350

Thanks! I'll check it out :) Since my Mac laptop will be my school computer, I may have to buy a new laptop anyway XD

Alright! Thank you so much :)

BluebellFlora

victoriae350 wrote: »

Oh great I need to save up for another laptop after I buy my Mac... -.- Thanks for helping!

No you don't, you can install Windows on your Mac. Igazor has already referenced it when he mentioned Boot Camp. Plenty of us have Windows installed on our Macs, either on a Boot Camp partition or in a virtual machine like Parallels. That's how we've been playing The Sims 4, and that's how I use CAW

victoriae350

> @BluebellFlora - Leave it to me to not see the most crucial part of someone's message XD :P Do the Macs still run smoothly, even with all the Sims 3 stuff on it? What about the Sims 2? (as i have the Ultimate Collection). My apologies for all the questions :)

BluebellFlora

Lol

If you want to play TS3 on a Mac, in OS X, then you need to pay a bit more for your Mac. You'll need one with a dedicated graphics card and at least 8Gb RAM, although 16Gb would be better. So looking at the current Macs in the Apple Store this is what you should consider:

iMacs -

http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/imac?product=ME087LL/A&step=config

http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/imac?product=ME088LL/A&step=config

http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/imac?product=ME089LL/A&step=config

http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/imac-retina


MacBook Pro -

http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/macbook-pro?product=MGXC2LL/A&step=config

Stay well clear of any Macs with the Intel Iris graphics cards, EA never released a patch to support them and the graphics really glitch out on them.

Simsocity

I have both an iMac (late 2013, 27") and a MacBook w/ Retina Display (mid-2014) and both run The Sims 3 flawlessly, minus the moments of the game lagging when in the open-world. I'm expecting better results from The Sims 4 when it is released Tuesday as it is just a much less lag game.

I would definitely recommend playing on a desktop as my iMac is amazing in its speed, but I would recommend upgrading it to 16GB of Ram (I have 32GB thanks to a friend ). A MacBook Retina will run it well, but it's a fact a desktop runs better than a laptop. Have fun choosing your new computer and if you need anymore help please feel free to message me directly or ask at anytime!

victoriae350

Oh.That's a lot of money :/ I don't know if I can afford a $2500 laptop XD

victoriae350

Thank you Simsocity! :)

BluebellFlora

Simsocity wrote: »

I have both an iMac (late 2013, 27") and a MacBook w/ Retina Display (mid-2014) and both run The Sims 3 flawlessly, minus the moments of the game lagging when in the open-world. I'm expecting better results from The Sims 4 when it is released Tuesday as it is just a much less lag game.

I would definitely recommend playing on a desktop as my iMac is amazing in its speed, but I would recommend upgrading it to 16GB of Ram (I have 32GB thanks to a friend ). A MacBook Retina will run it well, but it's a fact a desktop runs better than a laptop. Have fun choosing your new computer and if you need anymore help please feel free to message me directly or ask at anytime!

Which Retina MBP do you have?

BluebellFlora

The biggest difference we're anticipating between TS3 and TS4 should be performance because hopefully TS4 will be native to OS X. EA used Cider to 'wrap' TS3 which caused most of the lagging issues due to the game only being able to utilise 2Gb RAM, as opposed to the 4Gb RAM Windows users could access. That and their laziness when it came to supporting Apple's chosen graphics cards. Apple tend to use the same graphics cards in higher end iMacs (apart from the 5k Retina) and 15" MacBook Pros, they're dedicated (discrete) but still mobile chipsets. The iMacs will typically have more VRAM though.

CrystalMiner2364

> @victoriae350 said:
> I'm getting a Mac within the next year (splitting the cost fifty fifty with my mom and already almost half way towards paying my half :P SO HAPPY!) I wanted to know how the sims 3 and 4 worked quality wise? Since I only have the PC compatible disks, I'm probably going to have to rebuy. But how well do the games work? What kind if apple laptop would you recommend go play the games?

Well yours is gonna be really new, I don't think I can help all that much. But, for me, my update is 10.6.8 and it runs alright, but if you have that update and not that good of memory, you'll most likely get glitches of the following:
1. Black Face Sim Glitch (Sims' faces turn black)
2. Random Colors Glitch (Things hidden by TAB turn purple or yellow)
3. Ariel Glitches (Random errors that kinda look like spikes appear out of nowhere

You may be able to use Master Controller (Nrass) to help, but it won't work for me.

And congrats on the new computer! :)