Whisky development ends on macOS to help Wine flourish

AppleInsider

Whisky's developer has announced all further work on the app has ended, closing off one way to play Windows games on Apple Silicon Macs.

All work on the WINE-compatible Whisky has ended.

Issac Marovitz, developer of the popular WINE front-end app Whisky for macOS, has announced no futher development or maintenance will occur. It will not be upgrading to WINE 8+, and further fixes to specific apps and games won't be added in the future.

The Whisky maintenance notice also states that "Occasional updates may still come if macOS fundamentally breaks the main app, as it did in 15.4."

WINE is a Win32 cross-platform compatibility API which allows older Microsoft Windows apps to run on modern hardware - including on Apple Silicon. WINE works by translating older Win32 API calls to moderm APIs using a variety of graphics interfaces.

Whisky is a free alternative to the commercial CrossOver emulator from CodeWeavers. It utilizes WINE to run Win32 games and apps on the Mac.

Whisky provides a simple app interface for adding and running Win32 apps easily on a Mac. It also allows the running of some Steam games on the Mac.

Working for free and parasitic software

As for why Whisky won't be updated, Marovitz explains that there are two reasons behind the decision. For a start, he admits that he lost interest in the "incredibly time-consuming" project while he's a student.

Working on the project for free is hard to justify if he doesn't enjoy it, he adds.

Marovitz further states that Whisky is ending because it is a "parasitic app" that detracts from sales of CrossOver. The development of CrossOver is also instrumental for WINE development to continue on the Mac in the first place.

The continued existence of Whisky works against the development of WINE that it needs, simply by driving away sales from CrossOver.

Users who want to continue to have a front-end for WINE on the Mac are encouraged to purchase CrossOver.

Going forward, Whisky will continue to work on the Mac for some time, but any additional support, newly added Win32 or Steam games, and bug fixes will not be forthcoming. Whisky will continue to work for some time, at least until future modifications to macOS by Apple break the interfaces that link the two platforms.

As for his future intentions, Marovitz says he has already moved on to several other projects. This includes assisting the port of "Sonic Unleashed Recompiled" to macOS and Metal.

He concludes "I will continue to do cool stuff in the Mac space but just not this."

For a quick getting started guide to use Whisky on the Mac, see our guides How to play Windows games on your Mac with Whisky and How to install Steam using Whisky on Apple Silicon Macs.



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atonaldenim

Definitely good to support Codeweavers financially. Look out for their periodic sales, especially Black Friday. When you start your subscription during a sale period, it will conveniently come up for renewal during the next year's sale!

coolfactor

I had much more luck installing WINE via MacPorts than using CrossOver. The Windows app just fired right up. Trying to figure out CrossOver was confusing and a time vampire. Not seeing the benefit.

atonaldenim

CodeWeavers the company is one of the primary financial backers and development contributors to the open source WINE project. So being able to use WINE on its own, or via CrossOver, is in large part thanks to CodeWeavers. If you like or depend on WINE, then giving money to CodeWeavers is a good way to show it! 

https://www.codeweavers.com/wine

And you can also give money to the WINE project directly. https://www.winehq.org/donate

It’s great that you had a good experience using WINE by itself for your particular Windows app whatever it was, but a lot of people do find CrossOver to improve the WINE experience, especially with games. I have no connection with CodeWeavers, just been a WINE user off and on since switching to Linux 25 years ago and then to Mac OS X.