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Mac OS X is the current operating system used by personal computers (Macintoshes) from Apple. It is also one of the platforms on which Neverwinter Nights can be run. (The Mac version of the game is published by MacSoft, though, not Atari who published the Windows version.) The expansion packs for Macintoshes are available only as standalone products (there are no compilation editions—Gold, Platinum, or Diamond—for the Mac).

When Neverwinter Nights was developed and released, Mac OS ran on PowerPC hardware. Since then, Apple computers have shifted to Intel hardware, which is incompatible with software written for PowerPCs. BioWare had expressed an intent to create a "universal binary" version of Neverwinter Nights (a version that could run on both PowerPC and Intel hardware), but they were unable to obtain universal binary versions of all their tools before support for Neverwinter Nights officially ended.

Despite the lack of a universal binary, Neverwinter Nights can be run on Intel Macs, if a suitable compatibility layer is used. Prior to Mac OS X "Lion", Apple provided one such compatibility layer called "Rosetta", which allowed PowerPC software to run on Intel hardware. With the release of Lion, support for Rosetta was dropped, so players of Neverwinter Nights on Macs will require a different compatibility layer, most likely a Windows emulator or virtual machine. These are a different type of compatibility layer than Rosetta, allowing the Windows version of the game to be run under the Mac OS, rather than allowing the Mac version of the game to be run on Intel hardware. Emulators and virtual machines that have been successfully used to run Neverwinter Nights include Parallels, VMWare, and CrossOver (a commercial edition of Wine).

Installing and updating[]

Neverwinter Nights for the Mac ships as version 1.30, while both Mac expansions ship as version 1.62. There is no automatic update facility, so patches to the latest version (1.69) must be applied manually. Instructions used to be available from BioWare's patches page.

Due to a quirk in the expansion installers, neither expansion can be installed if the game has already been updated to a version greater than 1.62.

It is possible to install the Windows version of the expansion packs on a Mac. The process is described in the Mac NWN FAQ.

External links[]

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