Compatibility problems between Mac OS X Mountain Lion and Sims 3 (with all expansions)
I have my Macbook Pro 13" since mid 2010 and I've never had any problems on playing my Sims, but some months ago I had to upgrade my Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion. Since then I can't play my Sims for more than half an hour or it neither starts up.
What can I do? I've payed a lot of money for both the games and the computer, so I won't give up until I find a solution.
The game not working on Macs is not because of the OS version; it wouldn't matter if you had Snow Leopard or Mountain Lion since it's the game itself. The crashing after half an hour, you cannot fix. That is most likely a Cider crash and there is no solution for it. Because Cider crashes are related to memory problems with the game, every time you add an EP, store content, or CC to your game, you're making it more likely to crash sooner. Besides switching your OS, did you add EPs over the last couple of months because that would explain why you only just started experiencing it now. Also, it doesn't really matter what the actually memory is on your hard drive or RAM is because the game thinks you only have 2gb of RAM and treats it as such...this means trying to clear your computer for more space doesn't resolve the situation.
I'm not sure how much troubleshooting you've already tried, but here's some advice:
If you actually want to "play" the game as it's supposed to work, then get a PC or Bootcamp & Windows for your Mac. The game is not natively written for our systems (I have a mid-2009 Macbook Pro). As long as EA uses Cider, a "wrapper" for the game that enables Macs to play Windows games, it's going to crash with memory issues.
Do not follow EA game advisors' advice without taking into account that many times their advice is wrong for Mac users and can harm our systems. Just use common sense when it comes to their "advice."
Here are two good posts from the Sims 3 Mac forum that have a couple of useful "band-aids" to get the game to work temporarily:
-- http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/658546.page
-- http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/posts/list/611723.page
Best of luck in your battle to play the Sims 3.
