I'm not going to claim to be even close to being in my right mind, but I am an IT professional (or so I have fooled my employer of 23 years into thinking) and my computers at home are Macs including the 2019 desktop model I now play on. TS1, 2, and 4 were done up as proper ports into the macOS by a third party as commissioned by EA and they arguably work better or at least have the capacity to do so on strong enough hardware than their Windows counterparts. It was EA's decision to not do this with TS3 in particular and they have never chosen to back down from that decision -- the Cider implementation they cooked up to make TS3 work on Macs through a bogus Win XP wrapper instead of natively through the OS was, as it turned out for the players, horribly done and a huge mess.

Not every sims player considers themselves to be a game hobbyist. Many of us are much more focused on this one series of games, some to the point of excluding all others. If EA had no interest in providing a properly working Mac version of the game to this segment of its customer base, then honestly they just shouldn't have bothered. In the meantime I, like so many others, have been running TS3 for Windows through Bootcamp on my Mac so as not to have missed out on all the fun over the years.

I agree, I have no idea why they did it. As an IT expert maybe you can enlighten me as to what's so special about Apple products that makes them worth putting up with this, because as far as I can tell they're exactly the same thing everyone else makes only half as good, twice as expensive and with a quarter as many products and services available for them. I know they were relevant to the computer industry once upon a time but those times kind of ended the day Windows 98 launched and more or less unified the PC market.

Not to mention how difficult Apple products are to upgrade or repair. I see NO advantages whatsoever in having Apple products; but there are several drawbacks.

I do not "put up with" Macs, I enjoy using and maintaining them. While it may be true that there are fewer quality titles of games to play on them, depending on one's gaming preferences, I do not consider myself an avid gamer. And it is also true that they are less flexible with respect to hardware upgrades but I don't want to spend years upgrading and fiddling around with my hardware at home. I get more than enough of that sort of thing keeping what is an always seems to be aging network of PCs and servers going at work.

In my experience the builds are solid, the components used may be the same or similar to that on some PCs, but I have never had a Mac of my own break down on me mechanically before obsolescing. My desktop units last an average of 8 years before I am ready for something new. Plus the macOS is much more resistant to malware/viruses than any version of Windows; I don't even feel the need to run A/V on the macOS anymore, thus one less huge thing to worry about. For productivity I have everything I need on the Mac side. For oddball things that just do not exist or for which the Mac versions are inferior, and right now TS3 and its third party utilities are really the only software titles I require that fit that description, Win 10 is just a quick reboot away. So it's pretty much the best of both worlds (to me).

If someone is really put off by the Mac ecosystem or feels they are that irrelevant or can never be cost efficient/justified, then by all means they should not purchase one. I make recommendations where I see fit, but it's not like I'm fanatically religious about such love and devotion.

I will also add that in my experience Win 98 was better than its predecessor "the day it launched," although have to say the bar wasn't set very high there, but it was 98 SE (Second Edition) that finally brought stability to PCs they hadn't seen since the days of Win 3.11. In much the same way, XP that so many have such fond memories of wasn't really all that hot until its SP2 was pushed out years after its initial release.

Well I'm glad you get to enjoy your niche along with everything else, but most of us only run Windows. Key word being "most" as I'm pretty sure a Mac-only game with the budget The Sims 3 had would've been an instant commercial failure at launch.

I won't pretend to know a lot about A/V software because I haven't really used any in like 7 years or more, however I did look up a few sources to see if what you say is true and so far pretty much website I've seen lists Windows Defender for Windows 10 as one of the best A/V programs of 2019 and what reviews I've glanced over generally agree that it's a pretty competent A/V overall. On the other hand what few articles I've found on XProtect seem to compare it with pre-Windows 10 Windows Defender, which I actually know for a fact was pretty much useless and the first thing to go after Internet Explorer.

If there really is something to this claim I think it has more to do with Macs as a whole being a much smaller target than Windows PC's.

Sorry, I wasn't very clear. When I said that A/V was a huge pain that can be avoided, I didn't mean choosing which brand to use and setting it up although there is that too. I meant how potentially intrusive it can be to one's usage patterns. Yes, the built-in Defender product is fine for many MS users, others depending on what they do all day long on their devices and how they do it will need something stronger. But any of them no matter how well intentioned or lightweight vs. heavyweight have the potential to interfere with otherwise harmless programs and files, even sims games, and it's difficult to place an exact value on just not having to worry about false positives or action being taken on them silently while figuring out why something has suddenly just stopped working.

I guess in theory the built-in protections that the macOS provide by way of security updates could also go on an unnecessary file quarantine rampage on us, but I don't know that it's ever done that. The list of actual malware and types of bad behavior that it needs to watch for isn't very long by comparison, probably hence the assessment that it's not really very effective. Thus far it really hasn't needed to be more than it is, for most users, unless I guess they are in the habit of typing their admin password into every conceivable dialogue box that could ever ask for it, no mater where the query comes from.

OMG OMG OMG
Would this mean Error 12 and crashes would be just a bad memory?

Will The Sims 3 (64-Bit & Metal) Edition release for Windows PC?
There are no current plans to update the Windows PC version of The Sims 3. Version 1.6.9 is available to The Sims 3 players via Origin.

What if we started a petiton? Every Sims 3 fan should request this so-long awaited upgrade for the PC version to EA already!

Not until someone with a MAC comes back to this thread and says "OMG!! EA actually redid the entire game for us!" If all they are doing is to make a patch to shoehorn in some 32-bit support for the program as it currently stands, Windows still does that.

But it looks as though the "64-bit support" is probably going to be nothing more than we already have in Windows.

Yea even original Skyrim was 32 bit and it was in 2011(almost 12).

I do think a remastered Sims 2 and 3 with graphical upgrades and 64 bit will sell pretty well due to the hype alone. The sims fanbase is going kinda crazy over paralives even though it's graphics are lower than that of sims 2. So I think it could be done and EA will probably be down for that if we know anything about EA.

Remasters won't happen, too much music to re-license not to mention celebrity likenesses and brands like IKEA and Diesel. And Paralives is just a building game.

2 days with Catalina and back to Mojave for my part.. 2020 for sims 3 ? ok it's a good new but for Sims Medieval ? i saw on Apple Store, they will make an update for Sims 2 super collection "soon" .....

Well, if it turns out to be a 4GB patch of some sort

I've heard that mods wouldn't work on 64bit version of the game... is that true?

I don't see why this would be an issue. TS3 mods run in the game environment, not at the operating system level. Which OS and what kind shouldn't make any difference. If a "new" or patched version of the game has a new internal build number, as every patch level has ever had, then the six Core Mods in popular usage would need a small update to account for that but the otherwise resulting core version mismatch warning at startup would be a small annoyance rather than something that prevents gameplay.

The question is highly theoretical though, as there is no 64-bit version of the game and we have no evidence that EA has any plans to make one. The Mac announcement is only that plans are supposedly underway to trick the game into running (most likely as it now is) in Catalina's 64-bit only environment. That doesn't necessarily change the nature or the structure of the game program files at all.

Only a small amount of players are using mac so why EA wants to put aside the majority of their piggy bankers?

This is true as a percentage of the total number but as an absolute it's still A LOT of players and potential customers. The TS3 for Mac support board on EA's AHQ forum still lights up on a regular basis with players not yet on Catalina who require and obtain assistance in getting their game installed on the prior operating systems because there's now a few extra steps unrelated to 32- vs. 64-bit to go through that players on the Windows version do not need to worry about.

The only motivation EA could possibly have to even try this update is financial, so it must be the case that they wish to continue selling the game on both platforms and it remains lucrative enough for them to keep doing so. If almost no one on Macs wanted to buy it, then I agree this would be an odd decision to make.

https://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical...p/9257271#M7664

I wonder if it even makes sense for EA to try and port Sims 3 to the new Apple ARM architecture. I am sure they will do that for Sims 4, the current game in the series, but Sims 3? How many more people would've bought it if it was ported as oppose to the amount of work it requires? True, despite how many times the SimGurus will go and bash Sims 3, they have to know it's better and more popular than Sims 4 and it has big community, but most of those are current players, who already bought it all, or more accurately, all they want. And even though some of those players will want to play Sims 3 on their new ARM-based Mac in future, does that still justify enough the money and human resources put into such port (because that will not be a simple patch, it has to be a whole new port)? It will surely be interesting to see what EA will do with Sims 3 and, I am sure, some of their other still popular older games for ARM Macs.

Probably as TS3 became incompatible for the Mac at the right time- as it was still selling despite being an older series (keep in mind that many Simmers still have to complete their collections).

I have a feeling that the PC players won't be as lucky if Windows 7-10 can continue running TS3 normally into the future. C'mon Microsoft, you gotta phase out 32-bit on Windows 10 as soon as possible!

Just in case this was serious, although I don't think it was, there are many of us still using and supporting users with 32-bit applications in the workplace, including still supported versions of MS Office for example, who would rather this does not happen for a very long time.

Rumors?

https://www.reddit.com/r/thesims/co...for_pc_and_mac/

Of course, official statement > some random tech.

Either the entire thing is made up or someone is jumping on an EA Customer Support staff member messaging the wrong thing/reading from the wrong script. But the YouTuber who excitedly reported it so that everyone can scream in delight or horror, take your pick, with her friends proclaiming, "It's true, I have proof!" (no, they do not) is getting lots of hits on her video of it now, so I guess all is well.

When I was on Origin to launch the game, I saw a duplicata of game itself , and it is The Sims 3 64 bits !

(only available on Mac)

I see a second TS3 available on Origin for the macOS now, but it doesn't say 64-bit on it anywhere. And I can't download it, trying to do so ends in failure. But although I did update Origin, this is a very old install on a machine still running High Sierra, so I wouldn't draw any conclusions from that. There haven't been any formal announcements of anything new released yet, so perhaps it's all just beginning to be rolled out (that's the overly optimistic view, anyway).