24 hours of ChatGPT, about 6 re-installations of SimPE in Crossover, plus the DDS Utilities, and something called The Kitchen Sink for the .Net framework and whatever else SimPE might want, with a couple xml files ChatGPT wrote for me and I actually was able to create a recolor in SimPE on my Mac. Give me a day or two to rest, and I will try to write up a tutorial. Crossover is not cheap at $74, but you get a 2 week free trial so no loss if you can't get it working.

I wouldn't trust any files written by ChatGPT, nor would I spend $74 at its behest. You have an entire forum of actual human Sims 2 players here, some of whom are playing the game on a Mac, you could have just asked any of them, and it probably would have taken less time and might have been cheaper, as well.

Except AFAIK noone has got SimPE working on a Mac in all the years that it's been out, so it's unlikely that a human would be helpful.

Or, partition and run basic linux. That will run ts2 as well as all tools. For free. xD

Does Linux run all EPs as well?

If you can get Linux to run TS2, then there's absolutely no reason why you'd need to run the limited Mac-based version on it, in favor of any of the full(er) Windows-based versions - so pretty sure the answer to your question is yes.

The EP limit is Mac-based, since they stopped compatibility at BV, so if you want to play the game purely on a Mac directly via whichever official game provider you use, that's as high as it goes. You can run the Windows versions of TS2 on a Mac, too - but you would need a Windows (or Linux?) partition of some kind (or whatever all those extra hoops to jump through are called...).

Hey, are you calling us cheap?

Linux will run all EPs, as disk, UC or Legacy. It runs all the tools as well. Many, many users report pink soup gone. It can even be run off an external HD, but you get better results with an internal. Just like most games.

Oh, if anybody else has got SimPE running on their Mac, and loading more than the base game objects, DO let me know, and I will assist in creating a Wine wrapper for it to make that solution easily accessible to all Mac simmers. SimPE seems to reject the Mac file structure of the game, and will not read the Expansion packs, even when pointed directly and absolutely to them through Crossover/Wine. Yes, I did the entire File Table, not just the System folders. Creating a faux Windows registry did not help. Creating a faux Sims 2.exe helped a lot.

Newer Macs with M series chips (since 2020) do not have the dual boot option anymore, and I have not yet seen a Linux distro built for Apple silicone. Some people are happy enough with the Mac version, but would really like to create content. I am trying to help the Mac community, that's all.

Clarification: SimPE works on my Mac, but only loads the base game objects. I successfully did a recolor. I did not test any of the other tools, like Sim or Neighborhood browsing. I consider the failure to load all the objects a hard roadblock.

That said, I am now working on a port of SimPE to the Mac. I have wanted to do this forever. Being written in C# is not the hard roadblock it was 20 years ago. C# code works on Macs now, so it just needs to have a new front end written, but even that is a huge project. My current issue is that the SimPE source code you can download from Chris Hatch's SimFileShare is not complete. It is lacking a very important part of the app, or the file naming does not follow the normal conventions, making finding what I need very difficult.. Can somebody tell Chris Hatch to contact me? Note that I DO have programming experience, and am not a total fool stumbling in the dark.

Unless you're specifically looking to port Chris Hatch's version of SimPE for some reason, there are older versions with less boobies available, namely 0.75f-QA. As far as I know, Mac doesn't support UC; perhaps there's no need to port 0.77.69 then (if not having the new tools, e.g. neighborhood editing, isn't a deal breaker).

I would LOVE to be porting 0.75F_qa instead of 0.77.69. But where might I get the 0.75 source code? I can find the 0.58 source code on GitHub, so I can use that as a comparison to 0.77. But was 0.58 even a stable version?

The port is coming along nicely, bearing in mind that I am stuck copying and pasting hundreds of files one at a time because Chris Hatch has not put his source on GitHub.

A new option for Mac Simmers is available: Asahi Linux. This is for M-series Macs, the ones that cannot dual boot Windows. Of course, you then need to jump through all the hoops to get the Sims 2 installed and running, which means WINE. But it can be done, and apparently there are tutorials. https://catandsusim.tumblr.com Still working on the Mac port of SimPE.

Yes many of us have switched to Linux, as there is far less pink flashing. I still have some of my hoods on Windows only because its a pain to switch over to Linux and back, but yes it does run better.