I was just wondering why some games that I used to play back in the day on a mac, like Heroes of Might and Magic 3, arent compatible with iOs on GOG.com, while other games, like Stronghold, which I remember only being available for PC can be played on Apple computers.

Im neither a programmer nor am I familiar with developing business and stuff, hence Im asking. Im also not critizising the site for not having Mac versions of some game, Im simply curious as to why that is and Id be grateful to know.

CORRECTION: I confused OSX for computers with iOs for iphones and such. Im stoopid

iOS is designed so that you can only buy iOS games from Apple. It's the worst example of a closed environment and it makes it impossible to sell anything without Apple getting their cut.

Or are you talking about MacOS?

I think it has something to do with Mac's transition to Intel processor which made it incompatible with older versions. However I'm not familiar with Apple brand well enough to be 100% sure.

You do realise, right, that iOS is the OS running on iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch, not on Apple computers (that's OS X)?

Thing is, OS X (earlier called Mac OS X) has nothing in common with the old Mac OS (earlier simply called System, and was used until 2000), and cannot run software for that system.

Not to mention that Apple switched from PowerPC to x86 processors in 2004, so anything built before that cannot be run on modern Macintoshes either. It's a lot easier to run Windows software on OS X than it is to run old Mac OS X or Mac OS software.

Many games sold for OS X on GOG are actually the Windows or DOS versions, but GOG needs to get the rights to sell the games for Mac (else they can only sell them for Windows), and they need to make sure the games work through the emulation software used (that would be Wine in the case of Heroes of Might and Magic 3, Boxer or ScummVM in others, and a few actually having OS X versions directly usable on modern Macs).

EDIT: I typed this up for ten minutes, and only got ninja'd twice? Shape up, people!

Well, assuming the OP is talking about Mac and not iOS - pretty much what Mivas said. When Apple transitioned to Intel from PowerPC processors, most of the older software that ran on MacOS 9 and older ceased to work. Apple did offer a transitional solution in the form of Rosetta, but it's safe to say that older Mac software will not run at all on a newer Mac with OSX.

What GOG does in many cases is either run the game under DOSBox in the game of DOS games, or use WINE to run the Windows version under OSX.

Yeah, and Rosetta (PowerPC emulation layer) never ran Mac OS applications, only Mac OS X/PPC ones.

Classic was the compatibility layer for Mac OS applications, but that only ran on PPC hardware, not under Rosetta.