If you’ve been waiting to reinstall Aspyr Media’s Macintosh conversion of SimCity 4 since you got an Intel Mac, you’re in luck, thanks to the release of a new public beta version of SimCity 4: Rush Hour, the game’s expansion pack.
The wording is somewhat confusing on the Macgamefiles.com page where the download is hosted, as it says “For now, Simcity 4 Rush Hour is still not supported for play on Intel Macs.” This is not to imply that the Universal binary does not work on Intel-based Macs — simply that Aspyr does not yet warrant that the software will work.
If you have the original SimCity 4, you’re out of luck, unfortunately. An Aspyr spokesperson told Macworld that this update requires the Rush Hour expansion pack, which is bundled with the SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition, the only version of SimCity 4 that Aspyr still has in production.
It’s been released as an open, public beta version, intended to let users of the patch provide Aspyr with feedback as to how well it works prior to final testing and development, and a more general release. So if you’d like to give it a try, you now can.