Steam on OS X

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Serpico

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Oct 8, 2000
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Well, the prior Steam on OS X thread got locked up because it turned into yet another boring Mac vs PC thread by single-platform fanatics and fanboys. I know, shocking.

Its too bad, there were some informative posts going before the thread got derailed. I hope next time they just nuke posts from the point where it went off track.

Anyway, cross fingers it doesn't happen here again.

This post from Valve went up a little bit ago: http://store.steampowered.com/news/3837/

Some interesting statistics from the hardware data collected in the last week.

- Roughly two thirds of all Steam Mac users are running on a laptop.
- Portal (with the same code base across platforms) is one fifth as likely to crash on a Mac than on Windows.
- And one week after launch, already more than eleven percent of all Steam purchases are for the Mac.

Notebook stats don't surprise me one bit, especially considering how many PC/Steam users also have Macbooks. I'm again pretty happy with how well Source is running on OS X after a week. Portal looks amazing on the 27" iMac display. Even though I only plan on using Steam for OS X on my Macbook Pro when I'm away, its still cool to have on the iMac just for the eyecandy.

Of course, things like sales numbers are probably a bit skewed in the first week with all the anticipation and they will likely cool down from here before going back up again, but at the same time its clear that Valve made a very smart move by opening up the store to a whole new market. I'm really interested to see the hardware distribution when the numbers are revealed in a few weeks. I reckon we'll see a LOT of 9400m GPUs out there. :)
 
All I can say is, it's about time Apple came through with this. I think that Steam/Valve has been working towards this for awhile now. It's a win/win for all involved. Good selling point for Apple, Steams opens up to more customers/ and end users get the better sales on games and convinces of Steam.
 
I was hoping for TF2 today (sad... maybe next week?) but OS X Steam did get some new titles today: Killing Floor, Altitude (with free weekend), and Madballs in Babo: Invasion.
 
Serpico said:
- Portal (with the same code base across platforms) is one fifth as likely to crash on a Mac than on Windows.
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I wonder if this has to do mostly with the flaky audio HAL in Windows XP, though they just refer to "Windows".

Interesting, anyway.
 
I don't understand this at all.

Braid runs better on my mac mini at 1920x1200 than it does on my laptop with a 8600m GT and 1280x800.
 
Maximus825 said:
Interesting. What are the specs/OS versions of both?
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Laptop: Dell Vostro 1500: t7100 1.8GHz, 4GB DDR2, 500GB HDD, 8600m GT 256MB, Windows 7 x64, 1280x800
Mac: Mac Mini: p8400 2.26GHz, 2GB DDR3, 160GB HDD, 9400m, 10.6.3, 1200x1600 & 1920x1200 displays

When the new mini with the 320m and HDMI comes out...I'm definitely buying it.
 
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450 said:
When the new mini with the 320m and HDMI comes out...I'm definitely buying it.
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I've slagged on the mini a lot over the years, but even I see that such a tiny box with a 320m, HDMI out, and Plex loaded on it would make for a badass HTPC.
 
Interesting tidbits, so far. Really wanna see the complete Hardware Survey next month.

Portal (with the same code base across platforms) is one fifth as likely to crash on a Mac than on Windows.
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Did they consider:
- The populations? It might be a bit premature to throw the 1/5 stat out there when you're comparing a given population against a much, much smaller one. What will this look like in 1 month? 6 months? 2 years?
- Overclocked machines? Overclocking in many cases does introduce instability. What would the stats look like with "stock" Windows vs Mac? What about "stock" Windows Vista/7 vs Mac?
- Video driver version(s) (and manufacturer) most frequently popping up?
- What version of Windows was most responsible for crashing? There's lots of huge differences between the versions in the Windows pool.
- That silly hl2.exe crash after I've already exited the game?
Roughly two thirds of all Steam Mac users are running on a laptop.
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Not surprising, MBs and MBPs are the most attractive Apple products, to me at least.
And one week after launch, already more than eleven percent of all Steam purchases are for the Mac.
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This is something else I'd like to know more about. What model was the growth following initially? I'd argue the first week's Mac sales were proabably mostly built by tons of anticipation by already existing Steam users owning Macs, lending to exponential growth. What is it now? Linear? Logarithmic? What will word of mouth, forum posts, Facebook, etc. do for Steam's growth to Mac users having never touched Steam?
 
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Here were the games released today:
Madballs in Babo: Invasion
Killing Floor
Altitude
Europa Universalis 3
Hearts of Iron 3
Sam & Max Season 2
Sam & Max Season 3 - Ep. 2
Chains
Simplz Zoo
Caster
Eschalon Book 1
Windosill
Click to expand...
 
Serpico said:
I've slagged on the mini a lot over the years, but even I see that such a tiny box with a 320m, HDMI out, and Plex loaded on it would make for a badass HTPC.
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I hope that when this new machine comes out (if it does) its still at the $600 mark.
 
I'm really excited these are what's on the way, I was just picking up hl2 again on my desktop to give it another run through and I was going to install W7 in BootCamp to get those on my MBP while I waited for Valve to do it, but now I can skip W7 yay.
 
phide said:
Beautiful. And right on time! (for me, anyway)
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Its a great trailer, amazing how well Source has held up over all these years. Goes to show that superior art direction and design goes a long way to overcome technical limitations.

Its also why "toon" looking games like The Wind Waker and Team Fortress 2 will never ever date. :)
 
It's pretty slick that the Mac versions are free if you akready own the PC version.
 
valve1138 said:
It's pretty slick that the Mac versions are free if you akready own the PC version.
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So far every single game that Valve has released for Mac that has a Windows version has been single purchase for both. Its really great how they've treated all this, especially since a large number of their Steam customers with Mac clients probably have Windows machines as well (ie - Windows desktop and a Macbook Pro).
 
Steam.png


Get it while it's hot!
 
valve1138 said:
It's pretty slick that the Mac versions are free if you akready own the PC version.
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They are. 30% off. They are like 5-6 bucks each. Great deal, IMHO. Glad I already own these (I bought the super platinum pack back when HL2 was coming out, and The Orange Box when it was coming out)
 
CKMorpheus said:
They are. 30% off. They are like 5-6 bucks each. Great deal, IMHO. Glad I already own these (I bought the super platinum pack back when HL2 was coming out, and The Orange Box when it was coming out)
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Same I bought the crazy super duper ultra platinum mega pack thing when HL2 came out, unfortunately that account got hacked/stolen because my friend who plays CS used it and seems people don't like him or something.. so well I tried to take that up with Valve but the VAC standing was not good which wasn't ok and they wouldn't change it back...

So I ended up buying it all again, only this time it was called the Valve Complete Pack, so oh well. I also bought the Orange Box much later after this had happened when it came out.
 
0ptional said:
Same I bought the crazy super duper ultra platinum mega pack thing when HL2 came out, unfortunately that account got hacked/stolen because my friend who plays CS used it and seems people don't like him or something.. so well I tried to take that up with Valve but the VAC standing was not good which wasn't ok and they wouldn't change it back...
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Wow, that's a drag. Its a good thing that Valve put out these package deals like The Orange Box later on.
 
Yeah, oh well, that same friend or ex-friend is someone with whom I have broken ties, wasn't the kind of person I wanted to stick around, and the rest of our circle extradited him as well, the rest of us are still friends, but this one individual... no thank you, no respect for other peoples things, bad life choices without listening to reason, alcohol, pot, etc.. pass!
 
On topic, I just caught this.

This new update added achievements and engine enhancements to Half Life 2 and Episode 1, bringing it in-line featurewise with Episode 2. :D :D :D
 
Time for a bad advertising joke:

Half-Life 2: What PCs had in 2004, Macs get in 2010!

:p
 
Serpico said:
Shame, but if that guy is going to dig his own hole then whatever.
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Yeah, this was a few years ago, sounds like not much has changed when I do ever hear anything about him.

Serpico said:
On topic, I just caught this.

This new update added achievements and engine enhancements to Half Life 2 and Episode 1, bringing it in-line featurewise with Episode 2. :D :D :D
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Yeah, it seems Valve ported the most recent version of the engine instead of the 'old' source engine, which probably made this a lot easier and allowed them to update some of the 'older' apps too, so this is pretty cool.
 
It says a lot when Valve goes back to update the older games like this. Now I can go back, earn achievements, put multi-core rendering to use, see the improved graphical effects of Episode 2, all in one of my favorite games. :) Steam, of course, makes it very easy.
 
Servers must be getting hammered or something, my DL has been suspended and wont start again.

edit: It just started again.
 
Mine are all 3 done, but I live like down the street from Valve lol.
 
Maximus825 said:
It's crazy how just starting up Steam makes my Macbook Pro CPU hit 100C...
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55C here, higher than normal but no more than what HD Flash does. That said, Steam and Source clearly need to be optimized more, and they will be.

One thing that is surprising is that Half Life 2 jacks up GPU temps higher than Starcraft 2 does, while on my PC nothing except for maybe Crysis gets my GPU as hot as Starcraft 2. Its the weirdest thing, and now when I play SC2 I make sure to manually crank up my GPU fan when I'm going to play it.
 
It also looks like saved game syncing for HL2, Ep1, and Ep2 were added to Steam Cloud, and they work cross platform.

I fired up Steam on my PC, my saved games were uploaded (took a few minutes), then I fired up Episode 2 on my Macbook Pro, cloud synced up my files and my save games were there. Nice.

Only thing that would make it better is if it worked with ALL my games. :)
 
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