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Should I Buy TS3 on Steam?
Rouensims
Posts: 4,858 Member
I have never played The Sims 3, and I'm very tempted by the $5 sale on Steam. I understand there are some compatibility issues with Mac, though, and I play on a Macbook Pro laptop. Should I buy it on Origin instead? Or should I just keep playing TS4?
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This post shows how to find the keys.
https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/comment/15413546/#Comment_15413546
As for compatibility issues I am not aware of them since I use Windows OS. However I found this help forum
https://answers.ea.com/t5/The-Sims-3/Will-the-Sims-3-work-on-my-new-Macbook-Pro/td-p/4706690
I would suggest you start with base game and see how it works and then try more EP/SP
Do more research and watch review videos before you get any expansion pack.
LGR sims 3 review playlist, he is a non-biased reviewer
Playlist-> x
You are gonna have so much fun!!!! Then again I am biased sims 3 is my all time fave. Even-though I got introduced to the franchise with sims 4.
The second issue is that TS3 doesn't run very well on a Mac. There are many reasons why, but the biggest is the hard limit of 2 GB RAM in macOS, unlike the ~3.7 GB in Windows. There's no way around it. The practical effect is that it's difficult to play with the heavier packs (Pets, Seasons, probably Island Paradise and Into the Future) for any length of time, as even a brand new save will be near the memory limit if all of those packs are installed. Large families in long-running saves are also hard to manage. There are ways to try to keep RAM use down, but they only help a bit around the margins.
The third issue is that most Mac users need to apply one or more workarounds to get the game installed and running properly. The typical unknown error has several causes, and therefore several different solutions. Part of the issue is that certain packs (Ambitions, Late Night, Fast Lane, and Outdoor Living) don't install correctly, and part is that the game doesn't detect certain graphics cards on a Mac. The pack issues are almost always solvable; the graphics card problem should be but sometimes isn't.
The final issue is that the next version of macOS—Catalina (10.15)—won't run TS3 at all, period. Catalina won't run any 32-bit apps, and again there's no way around it. You could of course install Mojave on an external drive, but I'm not sure that's the experience you're looking for.
The solution that many of us have chosen is to Bootcamp our Macs, that is, partition the hard drive and install Windows on one side. It's a great approach for many people, but not everyone. For one thing, you'd need at least 250 GB storage to devote to the Windows side, and still enough left on the Mac side to do everything else. For another, playing in Windows won't help much with weaker hardware; the game will still struggle on a U-series processor and an integrated graphics card.
I don't mean to make the situation sound more dire than it is. I happily played for years on a 2010 MacBook Pro, with comparatively few complaints. But I only ever had one expansion pack, and I learned on my own to manage the issues that arose. Now though, the experience in Windows has been so much better, I could never go back.
Anyway, if you have questions about any of this, or want an opinion on how your Mac's hardware would handle TS3, feel free to ask.