Mac Poker Sites for US Players
To put it in poker terms, Mac poker players from the US are running pretty good right now. USA players using a Mac can basically have their pick from any poker room online, meaning that Mac poker players no longer have to settle just for whatever room offers Mac-compatibility. In fact, with just a handful of minor exceptions, playing online poker on a Mac is now indistinguishable from playing online poker using Windows.
Choosing the Best Mac Poker Site for USA Players
Since compatibility for Mac isn't really an issue any longer for United States poker players, choosing the top Mac poker site for USA players comes down to other factors: How secure is the room? How generous are the promotions? How soft are the games? Based on those questions and others, here are our top Mac online poker sites for players from the US.
Choices For Playing US Poker on Mac
When we say that compatibility isn't an issue, we mean it in a literal sense. You can play at any online poker room you want using a Mac. However, depending on the room, you may have to employ a specific program in order to play there using the Mac operating system. Here are your major options if you're from the United States and want to play legal online poker for the Mac.
- Online Poker With Mac Desktop Client - This is obviously the best option for most players - if the poker room has a dedicated Mac poker client, you should simply download and install that. After all, there's no reason to employ a fancy or complicated solution to a problem that doesn't exist.
- Using Boot Camp to Run Poker Programs - Boot Camp is the internal program provided by Mac that lets you run a "computer within a computer," meaning you can have Windows running inside your Mac. While generally well-designed, Boot Camp has one nasty feature: You have to reboot every time you want to switch from Windows to Mac (and vice versa). That could be a deal breaker for online poker players who want to be able to move between the two operating systems seamlessly.
- Using Parallels to Play Online Poker - If Boot Camp doesn't meet your needs, Parallels Desktop could be your answer. Parallels allows you to run programs for Windows and programs for Mac simultaneously. You never have to reboot to run one system or the other, and you can easily move files from one system to the next.
- Using VWware Fusion for Online Poker Sites - Fusion is a product similar in many ways to Parallels. People who prefer Fusion to Parallels cite ease of installation, a slightly lower price and tighter integration of Windows programs. Most reviews seem to agree that Fusion and Parallels are programs of roughly equal quality - it's really a matter of which you prefer personally, so it's tough to go wrong choosing either for playing online poker on your Mac.
- Play No Download Versions - Many online poker sites offer browser-based versions of their rooms that aren't tied to any one operating system. By playing using no download poker software, US Mac players can avoid purchasing any software and can get straight to playing online. While no download poker sites are often a bit stripped down in terms of features, they've evolved to the point of offering a stable and credible way to play online poker players for Mac users and other poker players from the US who would prefer not to download poker software.
There are a number of other options for playing online poker using a Mac, but the above list should cover the overwhelming majority of online poker players from the US. Armed with those options and out top picks for legal US Mac poker, it shouldn't be much trouble at all to get a game up and running on your Mac within a few minutes.
Apple: Company History and Interesting Facts
Apple, the parent company behind Mac, is one of the most valuable companies in the world. While the value of a publicly-traded company shifts from day to day along with the stock price, Apple has ridden the popularity of its desktop and mobile devices to a valuation in the hundreds of billions.
Speaking of hundreds of billions, that's an almost-accurate description of just how much cash Apple has on hand - and this is cash, not assets or other intangible goods - a staggering $117 billion. As a few sources have pointed out, that's enough cash to buy Facebook twice and still have enough left over to buy Twitter.
The company, which trades on the NASDAQ as APPL, was founded in 1976. Until 2007, the name of the company was actually "Apple Computer," but the "computer" was dropped that year as mobile devices eclipsed the more traditional computer hardware that had been the original focus of Apple.
