A Young Mind Behind a Powerful Tool
Isaac Marovitz isn’t your average college freshman. At just 18, while juggling classes at Northeastern University, he built Whisky—a clean, user-friendly Mac app that let people run Windows games using Wine.
But keeping up with expectations, schoolwork, and the software’s growing user base eventually became too much.
“I am 18, yes, and attending Northeastern University, so it’s always a balancing act between my school work and dev work,” he told Ars Technica.
Why He Pulled the Plug
The project wasn’t abandoned lightly. According to Marovitz, Whisky wasn’t contributing meaningfully to the larger Wine community—the open-source engine powering it.
“The amount that Whisky as a whole contributes to Wine is practically zero,” he explained. “Fixes for Wine running Mac games have to come from people who are not only incredibly knowledgeable on C, Wine, Windows, but also macOS.”
Even more concerning, Whisky’s success risked cannibalizing the market of CrossOver—a paid app from CodeWeavers that does similar work but financially supports ongoing Wine development.
“[Whisky] could seriously threaten CrossOver’s viability,” Marovitz admitted. “They were always curious and never told me what I should or should not do.”
Support, Not Competition
Despite technically being a competitor, CrossOver’s parent company, CodeWeavers, responded with surprising grace. CEO James B. Ramey expressed appreciation, not resentment.
“Whisky may have been a CrossOver competitor, but that’s not how we feel today,” Ramey wrote in a blog post. “We ‘tip our cap’ to Isaac and the impact he made to macOS gaming.”
He praised Marovitz’s passion and dedication, and explained the challenge of user expectations:
“The reality is that testing, support, and development take real resources … If CrossOver isn’t sustainable, it would likely dampen the future development of Wine and Proton.”
Not the End of the Road
Even as Whisky’s homepage now warns users that the app is no longer supported—“Apps and games may break at any time”—Marovitz hasn’t stopped building.
“Right now I’m working on the recompilation of Sonic Unleashed and bringing it fully to Mac,” he said. “But for the most part, my goals and passions have remained the same.”
A Lesson in Responsible Coding
Isaac Marovitz’s choice highlights a rare kind of maturity in open-source software development—knowing when to step back, not out of burnout, but out of respect for the ecosystem. Whisky may be gone, but the conversation it sparked around sustainability and support continues to ripple across the Mac gaming world.
