All Mac® users know about the Mac App Store®, and most have probably used it to get an app or two. If you’re also a Parallels Desktop® for Mac user, there’s another store you should check out: the Microsoft Store.

If you truly want the authentic Windows experience on a Mac without paying for Shadow's cloud gaming service, you should partition your hard drive using Boot Camp and run Windows 10 on a separate. I had googled playing AoE as downloaded from Steam and it seemed possible so I took the plunge and bought it, downloaded Steam in Crossover and then downloaded AoE through Steam. Initially, when opening the game it stated that it couldn't because I wasn't running Directx11, I tried -dxlevel90 through Steam Launch Commands and Crossover Launch.

The Microsoft Store is accessible from Windows 8 or 10—but in all practical terms, this means onlvidy Windows 10, since Windows 8 is used so rarely these days.

The Microsoft Store is for all things to play or consume on Windows 10: movies, music, apps, books, fonts, extensions to the Edge browser, and even hardware. In Apple® terms, it’s iTunes®, the Mac App Store, iBooks®, and the Apple Store® all rolled into one. However, in this blog post, I will focus mainly on apps available from the Microsoft Store.

Accessing the Store

Just as Apple has the App Store app, Microsoft has the Microsoft Store app. (See Figure 1.)

Here are some apps I have downloaded from the Microsoft Store, none of which are available on the Mac App Store:

Games	Productivity	Learning	Just Interesting
Age of Empires: Castle Siege	Microsoft Whiteboard	Kakitai: Learn Japanese by Writing	Nebo*
Crossy Road*	Office 365 Home*	Sensavis Visual Learning Tool	Plumbago
Microsoft Mahjong	Sway*	Penbook
Age of Empires: Definitive Edition	Delve*	GestureSign
Age of Sparta	Microsoft Math	Microsoft Font Maker
Translator*
Fluid Math

*Available for the iPhone®/iPad® in the Apple App Store.

All of these apps run fine for me on my MacBook Pro® in a Windows 10 VM using Parallels Desktop 14—with the single exception of Age of Empires: Definitive Edition. I used every setting I know to get this app to run with acceptable performance, but in the end, I gave up. (Age of Empires is my favorite game of all time, as I posted back in 2014.)

You can predict whether an app in the Microsoft Store will run in Parallels Desktop by looking at its system requirements from within your virtual machine. (See Figure 2.)

Figures 3–5 show some other apps from the Microsoft Store running in Parallels Desktop on my MacBook Pro.

How To Run Windows Steam Games On Mac 2020

Video 1 shows some games from the Microsoft Store running in Parallels Desktop 14 on my MacBook Pro:

And Video 2 shows some of the 3D models available for the Sensavis Visual Learning Tool:

As of today, there are about 800,000 Windows 10 apps in the Microsoft Store, as opposed to only about 11,000 in the Mac App Store. There are a number of excellent apps in both stores, and the Mac user with Parallels Desktop can take advantage of both to find the perfect app for your needs.

How To Run Windows Steam Games On Mac 2020

Have you found a particularly useful or novel app on the Microsoft Store? If so, tell us about it in the comments.