OS X Best Mac for Universal 32-bit Games

[davidg4781]

So my mini is giving me the "not optimized for your Mac" message for basically every game I have, and I JUST started getting in to gaming.

This got me thinking. With Mojave or whatever macOS version going to kill support for 32-bit Apps, what would be the BEST Mac we should start looking for to play these games? Obviously, a loaded Mac Pro would be best, but maybe overkill for some of these games.

For example, for OS 9 games, there are a few G3s that are best ever to run the games with no issues, but they're relatively inexpensive Macs. I'm thinking maybe a higher end iMac?

 

[Ritsuka]

You can just keep a partition or external disk with Mojave (the last version that will support 32bit) and boot with it when you want to play 32bit games.

 

[davidg4781]

That’s a good idea. I guess I was thinking, for others that want to run 32-bit games at their best, what’s the best used Mac to look for.

My mini isn’t able to upgrade to Mojave, but I don’t think it’s able to run at top graphics on more modern games. It does pretty good for old Lego games.

 

[valdikor]

Any Mac released before Fall 2019, which is when Macs will start shipping with 10.15 preinstalled. So the best pre-late 2019 Mac you can afford is your best Mac for running 32-bit games, and you can run a Mojave partition on it as long as needed. But if you run a separate partition for an old version of macOS, you might as well have Windows on that partition and have a better gaming experience.

 

[davidg4781]

That’s true. I guess this is different than looking for the best PowerPC to run older Mac games. Maybe this discussion would be more appropriate in 10 years.

Or developers could update their apps. I’d pay a few bucks for them to make them compatible.

 

[Huntn]

I just noticed there is a MacOS 10.14, has that been released yet?