When the online casino market was exploding in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Macintosh users were mostly left out in the cold. There just weren’t many options for Mac users to play online casino games. As technology has improved, there have been more options for Mac owners. Continue reading to learn more about Mac casino options.
PC Emulator Casinos Options
Mac owners can use something called a PC emulator to play at casinos that are not Mac-compatible. A PC emulator is a software program that basically makes a section of a Mac act just like a Windows-based computer. So you can set up an emulator and play at traditional online casinos. This is not exactly a plug-and-play solution, so it may not be a friendly way to play casino games for every Mac owner. This is also something that you need to test extensively by playing the free version of any casino before playing for real money. You need to make sure all of the games you plan to play operate correctly in the emulator and there are no glitches. You don’t want to start playing for real money and then realize there is a problem.
Flash Mac Casinos
Many internet users assume that anything that can be done on the screen that doesn’t require a download is a flash application. While this is not entirely true, for the purposes of this page you can feel free to think of all non-download casinos as flash casinos. The earliest casinos that could be played by Mac users were flash-based, so now any instant-play casino is called a flash casino by many players.
There are more and more online casinos all of the time that offer instant play and basically any of them are compatible with Apple products. Almost all of these online casinos advertise the availability of instant play on their main page.
Other Mac Casino Options
Of course, most Mac owners wouldn’t touch a Windows-based computer with a ten-foot pole, but if you just have to play at a certain online casino that only offers non-Mac-compatible options, you could pick up a cheap PC to just play online casino games on. You can pick up cheaper ones for less than $500 that will play all the games you want. Of course your Windows computer will be more susceptible to computer viruses and other issues than your Mac, but the main difference will be learning to navigate on the different operating system. This won’t take long but there is a small learning curve if you have never used a Windows PC before.
Mac Casino Games
While many online casinos used to offer more games in their download software versions than they did in their instant-play versions, now you can find more and more instant-play versions that have a full suite of games. Even on the watered-down versions, you can find most of the popular table games like craps, baccarat, blackjack and roulette. The big difference tends to be in the number of slot machine games and video poker varieties. So instead of 100 slots games, there might only be 20 or 25. Some of the less popular table games are sometimes not included, like Red Dog, Pai Gow poker and blackjack variations. The main thing is to make sure the instant-play version includes all of the games you want to play. Just because the full version includes your favorite games, don’t assume every version does. This goes for mobile casino versions as well.
Mac Casino Bonuses
The deposit bonuses available at most online casinos are not specific to Mac or Windows PC users. This is mainly because once you start playing, there isn’t really any difference between playing on a Mac or PC. That isn’t to say that you might not run across a Mac-specific bonus. I have seen far stranger “special” bonuses. The marketing departments for online casinos have been known to come up with some off-the-wall promotions.
If you do find a special Mac user bonus, you should read the terms carefully to make sure they aren’t worse than normal bonus terms and conditions. Many special bonuses have stricter play-through requirements or restrictions. If they do, you will want to claim the regular bonus. I realize this doesn’t make much sense from a practical standpoint, but people tend to be drawn to “special” promotions, and businesses know this and take advantage of it.
Mac Casinos Conclusion
Between flash and other non-download options and PC emulator software, Mac owners can now enjoy just as wide a range of great casino games as Windows-based computers can. This trend has continued on to the mobile market with most mobile gaming casinos offering software platforms supporting iPads and iPhones.