Wine was initially intended to support UNIX-like operating systems like Linux and, you guessed it, the then called OS X. Of course, macOS isn’t the only beneficiary of the new release.
Even more, Wine 2.0 now also supports high density Retina displays, though that setting has to be enabled first. Wine can now run the growing number of 64-bit Windows applications on 64-bit Macs. In other words, to the Windows program, it would seem that it is running on some version of Windows.Ĭonsidering Wine was started back in 1993, reaching version 2.0 is definitely a big milestone, but perhaps even more so for macOS users. It is, instead, a compatibility layer that translates systems calls made by the Windows program into their macOS or Linux equivalent.
Well, it’s not an emulator nor a virtual machine, so you’re not running a full, or even stripped down, version of Windows (and hence no need for Windows licenses).
Wine (which actually started out as WINE) stands for “Wine Is Not an Emulator”, a “backronym” that doesn’t really help describe what it is.
