How to play the Sims 4 on your Mac using Bootcamp

Alot of you guys and girls have macs like myself and you're probably a little peeved about The Sims 4 not being available on Mac at launch.

Well, you can still play at launch and here's how...

What you'll need:

• A downloaded ISO of Windows 7 or 8
• A usb drive / penstick preferably 8gb or more.
• A mac with at the very least 30gb+ free space
• And... well that's pretty much all you need.

The mac has a built in utility called Bootcamp that lets you install Windows on a separate partition. This basically means it splits your harddrive into 2 sections, one for OSX and one for Windows. Allowing you to boot into either one when you start your mac. It's really handy! I recommend this for gaming instead of virtualisation programs like Parallels/VMWare because all those do is run Windows within OSX using only a fraction of your macs power/resources to run Windows therefore games will be almost unplayable.

All you have to do is go into your Applications Folder > Utilities > Bootcamp Assistant

From there follow the instructions and tick the first box "Create a Windows 7 or later version install disk"

It will then ask you where to find the ISO you downloaded for Windows. Find the iso, and choose the pen-drive you want to burn Windows onto (make sure you have backed up any files on that penstick, as this will erase anything on it)

Proceed with the instructions, and what it will do is burn the windows ISO onto the pen-drive, then restart into the Windows installer. From there you'll install Windows as you would on any other computer.

Lastly, once Windows is installed you can download drivers for the specific graphics card your mac has (if it has one) and run Windows Update etc. And from there you'll be able to download and install Origin and get your mac prepped to play The Sims 4!

Congrats, your mac is ready to play The Sims 4. Hope this guide helped. Feel free to ask questions, I may update this post in more detail if you need help!


Note: To switch between OSX and Windows, when you restart your mac, hold down the alt key when the apple logo shows, and it will then ask you what operating system you want to boot into. To choose what OS you want your mac to boot into automatically when starting up (if you don't hold the alt key, open system preferences in OSX, choose Startup Disk and select the Windows or the OSX partition Simples.

You can always wipe your windows partition from within OSX and reclaim the full HD back at any time

And as for your graphics card, click the apple icon on your menu bar and click "About this Mac" a window should pop up telling you about your mac. Click 'more info' and then another window should pop up. Next to 'Graphics' it should tell you what graphics card you have. Think you could screenshot that for me? or tell me what you have? And I'll tell you where you can find drivers for your card.

Gah, sorry to tell you but you don't have a dedicated graphics card within your mac... it only has Intel HD graphics. like my Macbook air. So I am not sure how well it'll run The Sims 4 compared to dedicated nvidia/amd graphics cards.



Since that's the case though, you wont have to download any drivers from places like nVidia or AMD but what you can do to maybe improve compatibility is once windows is installed and running smoothly, go here: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/SearchResult.aspx?lang=&ProductID=3712&ProdId=3712

And download the latest intel hd graphics driver for your version of Windows... once you've installed it you should be good to go

I am just about to head to bed, but looking at your specs.. your cpu is as year behind mine as is the intel graphics chip... so I can't promise you'll get amazing performance (everything on ultra) but it should still work and it WILL run so don't worry about it. It was playable on my Macbook Air... it wasn't ideal but it was playable

I'd say its worth trying it out regardless you may be surprised!

If you have a copy of Windows (on dvd) and a pc with Windows on it, you can burn that copy of Windows from the dvd to an iso file using this guide here: http://pcsupport.about.com/od/software-tools/a/create-iso-image-file.htm

There's another way which may be a bit more risky, legal wise which I can't recommend for legal reasons. I'll PM you some information you might find useful, if the above isn't an option.

Am I correct in saying your at the stage where it's restarted and booted into Windows? And its taking you through the Windows installation? Make sure you select custom install and then when it shows you what drives to install Windows on, it should show you the bootcamp partition....



Select the bootcamp drive, then click 'Drive Options (advanced) at the bottom right. Then click Format! Once you click format, it should let you click the next button and proceed with the installation.

You can find a more detailed guide with more images here: `

http://www.redmondpie.com/install-windows-8-on-mac-using-boot-camp-tutorial/

@Becky I updated the above post, hope it helps more!

no problem Becky, here's a similar guide but for Windows 7: http://www.nursing.vanderbilt.edu/tools/help/mac_windowinstallation.pdf