Poker on a Mac

Duck Rabbit · #1 02-20-2007, 05:07 PM

I'm thinking about buying a Mac but I know that not many poker apps are available for the Mac. I know full tilt is available. I'm pretty sure PT is not available on a Mac, right? Are there any other PT/Pahud alternatives that are available on the Mac? Thanks.

Duck Rabbit · #2 02-20-2007, 05:16 PM

Is running virtual PC a good option?

tsearcher · #3 02-20-2007, 06:14 PM

You don't need to run Virtual PC on the new Intel Macs. You can either buy Parallels or use Apple's free Boot Camp and run Windows natively. Check out Apple's web site and/or google "running windows on a Mac".

There are also some older threads on this forum discussing this matter.

TroutMaskReplica · #4 02-21-2007, 03:44 PM

incidentally, myself and at least a few other people that I am aware of cannot run Stars on Virtual PC since the latest update (over the weekend). Prior to this it ran pretty well if a little sluggish when multi-tabling. I'm probably just going to upgrade to a new macbook and use boot camp/parallels. Stars support did tell me they are in the process of developing a mac client but this might still be some ways off.

Duck Rabbit · #5 02-21-2007, 04:35 PM

When you run windows using parallels or bootcamp, can you access windows files using os-x? For example, would I be able to play music files that are downloaded using a windows program through os-x? Or is the file architechture kept completely seperate?

TroutMaskReplica · #6 02-21-2007, 05:57 PM

ok, I'm wary of answering this authoritatively since I haven't actually used either boot camp/parallels yet. I have researched them though and talked about parallels with a collegue who uses it (albeit not for poker).

As far as I understand with boot camp you literally boot your mac in windows, so to get back to OS X you'd need to restart again. Parallels on the other hand operates as a window within OSX within which Windows runs (like Virtual PC but much faster/more efficiently from what I've heard).

I know that if you're running Windows in Parallels you can definitely drag and drop files to and from your OSX desktop. So you can absolutely play music files you've downloaded from your Windows in the mac OS. As for boot camp - I don't know if you can access your windows files while running OS X, but worst case scenario you could always dump them to a CD/DVD and import them from that. hope that helps

QuantumD · #7 02-21-2007, 06:56 PM

Virtual PC doesn't work on Intel Macs.

When using Parallels, it runs within OS X as another OS X application and you are able to share files between both OS and run programs from both OS at the same time. Where as with Boot Camp, you need to boot to one OS or the other. I'm not sure if you can share files between them with Boot Camp.

I have run a number of poker sites and apps under Parallels and they all run fine.

I've also tried CrossOver, which is a port of the Wine Windows emulator for the Mac, but most poker programs doen't run very well if at all.

JimmytheGeek · #8 02-21-2007, 06:58 PM

[ QUOTE ]
incidentally, myself and at least a few other people that I am aware of cannot run Stars on Virtual PC since the latest update (over the weekend). Prior to this it ran pretty well if a little sluggish when multi-tabling. I'm probably just going to upgrade to a new macbook and use boot camp/parallels. Stars support did tell me they are in the process of developing a mac client but this might still be some ways off.

[/ QUOTE ]

My brother ran into this same issue. He copied the Stars folder from a recent back-up of his VPC hard disk file, with an older version of the Stars client, to his current VPC hard disk file. It worked just fine. Note that you must start the Stars client with "PokerStars.exe" instead of the default "PokerStarsUpdate.exe" to keep the client from updating to the latest version.

As for myself, I got tired of the sluggishness of playing under VPC and built a PC for about $600 that I use exclusively for playing poker. I use a USB switch to swap the keyboard and mouse back and forth and use the source switch on my Samsung 20" monitor to switch it back and forth. A USB drive, also switched by the USB switch, works great to transfer files from one system to the other.

tsearcher · #9 02-21-2007, 09:34 PM

[ QUOTE ]

I'm not sure if you can share files between them with Boot Camp.

[/ QUOTE ]

I believe you can, depending on how you format the windows hard drive partition.

pokermac · #10 02-21-2007, 10:00 PM

I use parallels on a MacBook - with pokertracker, and PAHUD - Full Tilt, Stars mostly.

Unequivocally the best solution. My cost was ~80 for parallels and ~80 for WinXP (through my local university library). Parallels is great.

That said, I still use the OS X apps - Full Tilt and Bugsy's as well. You can dump your hand histories over to the Parallels virtual drive very easily to update your pokertracker. Sometimes I don't want to know what your VPIP is...lol