Recent developments in virtualization, emulation and techniques that allow running of applications developed for “foreign” platforms as if they were native ones, have made it relatively easy, and often free, to use the same app in mixed environments.

Wine is easy enough to install but uses command line prompts that are hard to figure out. If you get winebottler, try both the stable the and unstable versions, I've found that the unstable works better for certain applications. P.S winebottler and wineskin doesnt officially support Sierra(on their websites) but I. With Porting Kit, you can install Windows games and apps on macOS easily using Wineskin technology!

This post takes a closer look on one of this techniques, namely Wine (acronym for “Wine Is Not an Emulator”), that allows running native Windows software on POSIX-compliant operating systems, such as Linux, macOS, & BSD, without need for a Windows license.

Here we install the game on macOS Sierra / High Sierra (the screenshots are from Sierra).

• When trying to open osu! On mac OS high sierra, nothing happens. I tried various different methods to fix this and researched quite a bit, and i finally found a way to get it running (Note that this for the latest release of osu! Not the stable release). Open wineskin winery, and click 'Create a new blank Wrapper' - you can name this.
• I have a MacBook with a 2.3ghz i9, 5500m 4gb, 16gigs of ram, and a one tb ssd. I usually play with an external monitor. Before, in call of duty modern warfare, my frames would immediately dip to around 50 fps, while in war zone, it would dip all the way to 30 fps.

1. First you need to allow your system to install apps from “App Store and identified developers” (or possibly “Anyone”, depending on what else needs to be installed other than XQuartz and Wine). Earlier macOS versions let you alter the default setting (that allows apps only from the App Store) by setting the Gatekeeper option under System Preferences > Security & Privacy > General, but High Sierra hides the other two options and you need to enable them by opening the Terminal (in Finder, click Go > Utilities and open Terminal), and type the following (you need to enter your user password to be able to change the setting):

2. After this you can go and change the Gatekeeper setting.
3. Go to https://www.winehq.org and read the introductory text, if you are not familiar with the concept of Wine, then go to https://wiki.winehq.org/MacOS to read installation instructions specific to macOS.
4. You first need to have XQuartz 2.7.7. (or later) installed. Visit https://www.xquartz.org to download it. Click the .pkg file in Downloads to mount the installer, then launch it to go through the installation.
5. After having installed XQuartz, download Wine at https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/macosx/download.html (version 2.21 “Wine Staging” is a good choice):
6. Download the .pkg file, click it in Downloads to mount the installer, then launch it to start the installation. During the installation, you may be interrupted by prompts to install support for Mono (for .NET applications) and Gecko (for apps that use HTML internally). Accept to install these support packages.
   
   
7. After the installation is complete, you can go to http://www.4windsmj.com/downloads01.htm and download the latest version of Four Winds Mah Jong. Once downloaded, click the executable setup package (normally 4W2Full24.exe) in Downloads. It will automatically be launched in Wine and installed in correct location. A Windows shortcut is placed on the desktop, but it naturally does not work. You need to replace it with a Mac alias.
8. Open your Home folder (in Finder, click Go > Home or press Cmd+Shift+H). Now make hidden files and folders visible by pressing Cmd+Shift+. (dot). This shows the hidden .wine folder where your Windows environment is installed:
9. Double click the .wine folder and open folders until you have 4Winds2 folder open (the folder path relative to .wine is, as shown in the image below: drive_c > Program Files > 4Winds2:
10. Here, click with the secondary mouse button on 4Winds2.exe to create an alias, then drag and drop it on your desktop.
11. Launch Four Winds by double clicking the alias.
12. Once launched, go to File > Preferences, and under User Interface > General option page (accessed by the category tree on the left), disable color management by clearing the check mark from the Use color management option:

    You may also need to Bypass DirectX sound (under the same option page), and choose a MIDI file (on the Themes option page) for the “Background” and “Win of the game” music, or set their values to “none”. (the default music comes as .mp3 files which require DirectX). If you do not change the sound settings, you can turn off background music from the Options menu so that an unsupported feature is not used.

13. If you have a one-button mouse, click the Game Controls button, then change the mouse control setting for discarding from “Right click on raised tile” to “Click on raised tile”. On the same dialog box, you may need to uncheck Use custom cursors (with recent Wine builds, animated and custom cursors seem to be working fine, but if the game suddenly freezes, one possible cause is the use of custom mouse cursors).
14. Close the Preferences dialog box and click Help > Register to enter your registration name and number. Then choose Game > New Game to start a new game with preferred rules.
15. You may want to test with different game boards by using the options under the View > Game boards sub menu to find the board size and layout that works best on your screen. Note that the quality of graphics is mediocre compared to the original but looks slightly better on boards that have not been scaled. If you choose a 24-bit theme, scaling has a better quality: e.g., for the default graphics, choose File > Preferences, then under User Interface > Themes, choose “Four Winds (24-bit)”.

And there you are, running Four Winds Mah Jong on your Mac, without needing a Windows license. The quality is not as good as when using VMWare or VirtualBox (both free), or Parallels Desktop, not to mention running the game on real Windows on a BootCamp partition, but at least you can now play proper Mahjong with multitude of rule options offline on your Mac.

A screenshot of Four Winds 2.18 running on macOS Mojave using the latest Wine (4.2 Staging) and XQuartz 2.7.11.
The quality of graphics has improved with latest versions and scaled boards work well.

Running Four Winds on Linux

The procedure is basically the same as on macOS, though installation happens from within the Terminal. WineHQ has instructions for installing Wine on several different Linux systems. Below is a screenshot of Four Winds running on Ubuntu 16.04 using Wine 3.0.

Run Windows-based Programs on a Mac

» News: Cryptographic Update for WineBottler 4.0.1.1

Turn Windows-based programs into Mac apps –
NOT. ;)

WineBottler packages Windows-based programs like browsers, media-players, games or business appli­ca­tions snugly into Mac app-bundles.
Your company provides you with a login, mail, calendar and contacts that only work on certain browsers?
You quickly want to test your websites in Windows-based browsers.
You want to play games, that are not ported to OS X?
Your online trading platform or accounting tool only runs on Windows?
Your audio book player is not available on OS X?

Wineskin Winery Mojave

No need to install emulators, virtualizers or boot into other operating systems – WineBottler runs your Windows-based programs directly on your Mac.
This is possible thanks to a Windows-compatible subsystem, which is provided by the great OpenSource tool Wine.

WineBottler does Automated Installations:

Select from a wide range of software for which WineBottler offers automated installations. It is as easy as hitting 'Install' – and WineBottler will leave you with a neat app on your desktop. WineBottler does not come with the programs themselves, but with scripts, that take care of down­loading, configuring and installing everything into an app for you.

WineBottler can pack your .exe into an Mac .app ...

Double-click your .exe or .msi and convert it into an app with WineBottler. You can run the generated app like every other program on your Mac. For advanced users, WineBottler gives you a selection of options: install special dependencies and even turn your .exe into a self-contained app - that is an app, that contains everything to run it... even on other Macs. Porting to OS X never was easier ;).
Find out more - have a look at the Documentation.

... or just run that .exe.

You don't care about generating an app and just want to run it? Double-click the .exe, choose 'Run directly' and Wine will run it in a generic environment.

Enjoy, it's free!

Like Wine, WineBottler is free software. We've made it out of our own needs and now we share the result. If you are happy with it, you can keep the project rolling by sending a small Donation.

Wineskin Mac

Need other Versions of WineBottler or Wine.app?

We keep selected builds for you. Versions before 1.4.1 still run on OS X Tiger and Leopard.
You find them under Downloads.

Wineskin Winery Mac High Sierra Leone

Support

If you have questions installing a certain program, please have a look at the documentation or at appdb.winehq.org first. winehq.org is the hub for all info about wine. It contains notes, hints and tricks to install all major programs.
winehq.org is NOT affiliated with WineBottler in any way. So please do NOT post bug-reports or questions about WineBottler there - write an eMail to mikesmassivemess(at)kronenberg.org and if time permits, i'll try to get your exe running.
WineBottler is my hobby and it is free, so please understand, that I can't give you a one-to-one support. If you are looking for a Wine version with great dedicated support: Note down this Promo Code: 'TANGENT' (for a 30% discount) – then head over to CrossOver.