Disappointed with Steam for Mac?

[Halamolo]

Hamolo - sorry... all you had to know about Steam - BEFORE - you purchase some games you can get on their site.
www.steampoweredgames.com

I cannot understand your problem. Meanwhile i have for sure about 60 PC games purchased through steam - without problems.

Some games (also Portal) you can play offline.

I never had a problem with steam at all.

You are blaming here valve/steam for absolutely clear things that you could read BEFORE you purchase.

so... stop this ******** and RTFM.
Have a nice day

Why are you going in circles? I already admitted my mistake, but now that I know the whole deal, I said I don´t like it. RTFMy post again!

My other blaming for Steam´s crappy presentation for OS X is complitely justified!

 

[jetoo]

Why be disappointed? For years, all mac users have been waiting for Someone to port PC games to mac. Now that steam has done it, we are going to yell at them? Come on!
This is absurd.

I switched from PC to Mac a few months ago and was never hoping to play again on MAC (not with bootcamp). Now that I can, I'm thankful for Valve/ Steam!

A (happy) mac users

 

[Halamolo]

Why be disappointed? For years, all mac users have been waiting for Someone to port PC games to mac. Now that steam has done it, we are going to yell at them? Come on!
This is absurd.

Hell yeah we are gonna shout, if they can´t do their job right. I´d rather wait another year, than get this crap. It´s an insult to OS X and Mac platform. After I installed Steam, OS X started to remind me awful lot like Windows! And we don´t want that! Or at least I don´t. Maybe you do?

Let´s have a higher standard for OS X applications!

I switched from PC to Mac a few months ago and was never hoping to play again on MAC (not with bootcamp). Now that I can, I'm thankful for Valve/ Steam!

A (happy) mac users

Well I can´t thanks to Valve/Steam. I´ve paid good money and I can´t even play the game.

 

[Schtumple]

Hell yeah we are gonna shout, if they can´t do their job right. I´d rather wait another year, than get this crap. It´s an insult to OS X and Mac platform. After I installed Steam, OS X started to remind me awful lot like Windows! And we don´t want that! Or at least I don´t. Maybe you do?

Let´s have a higher standard for OS X applications!

I've had zero problems... I'll admit the Steam app seems a bit sluggish when first running, but it's doing a fare chunk. So I think it's wonderful, maybe instead of venting on a forum, you should send a feedback form to Valve (could be on there website), and constructively try and tell them the problem, instead of calling it "an insult to Mac" which in itself is a ridiculous thing to say, but that's another story for another day.

This thread (if anything productive) is proof the mac community will NEVER be satisfied, and always find something to winge about.

 

[mixel]

Hell yeah we are gonna shout, if they can´t do their job right. I´d rather wait another year, than get this crap. It´s an insult to OS X and Mac platform. After I installed Steam, OS X started to remind me awful lot like Windows! And we don´t want that! Or at least I don´t. Maybe you do?

Let´s have a higher standard for OS X applications!



Well I can´t thanks to Valve/Steam. I´ve paid good money and I can´t even play the game.

It's not perfect yet.. Apple cant even get that right with their OS releases either though, Aperture's last revision was plagued with teething problems.. MobileMe was completely screwy.. It's not Windows-like to expect Steam to be broken as it's not at all broken in Windows.

Steam is an ambitious project and a massive step forward. And it's working fine for a lot of people, myself included… I'm not saying you shouldn't complain I'm just saying I think you're going overboard.

Steam is Steam, a well established, solid network/client. osX version is a little rough around the edges, but your games WILL all work shortly if they dont now, and UI issues *will* be sorted. I'm personally happy that Steam looks the same on multiple platforms in its default state. (apart from the little layout glitches in the osX version)

Cheer up! Geez, you now have a future with great Mac gaming possibilities instead of one of having to reboot and pay big annoying windows licenses to play almost anything.

 

[Halamolo]

I've had zero problems... I'll admit the Steam app seems a bit sluggish when first running, but it's doing a fare chunk. So I think it's wonderful, maybe instead of venting on a forum, you should send a feedback form to Valve (could be on there website), and constructively try and tell them the problem, instead of calling it "an insult to Mac" which in itself is a ridiculous thing to say, but that's another story for another day.

Already have, but I don´t hold my breath for them to answer.

"Bit sluggish"? Man that´s an understatement of the year. I´ve never seen any app on OS X with crappy quality like this! Seriously! And "they just rolled it out" doesn´t make it alright! There should be at least some kind of quality standard, before "rolling it out".

This thread (if anything productive) is proof the mac community will NEVER be satisfied, and always find something to winge about.

I´m satisfied with lots of things. More than satisfied with some things. So there goes your "proof" about the Mac community. You shouldn´t make wild accusations without any real proof. Makes you look idiotic. Not saying that you are, just makes you look like one.

By the way, where does all these apologists come from?

Only place where they should come is from Valve Corporation.

 

[mixel]

Already have, but I don´t hold my breath for them to answer.

"Bit sluggish"? Man that´s an understatement of the year. I´ve never seen any app on OS X with crappy quality like this! Seriously! And "they just rolled it out" doesn´t make it alright! There should be at least some kind of quality standard, before "rolling it out".

..? Whats so sluggish about it? wonky scrolling? Oh no! Use the scrollbar, problem solved. Scrolling up and down smoothly is hardly the most important thing, and will be sorted shortly I'm sure. (its webkit based afterall) Otherwise the interface is perfectly responsive here, I don't get it! (other than your game/s not working, i can see why that's an issue, lol)

I´m satisfied with lots of things. More than satisfied with some things. So there goes your "proof" about the Mac community. You shouldn´t make wild accusations without any real proof. Makes you look idiotic. Not saying that you are, just makes you look like one.

By the way, where does all these apologists come from?

Only place where they should come is from Valve Corporation.

Where do all the short sighted haters come from? Oh right. Stereotypical mac user-base! We've had years of experience of Valve and know they do things well. They'll fix the niggles up. It's not being an apologist, it's being realistic and giving credit where it's due. Nothing works perfectly for everyone on launch. Ever. It's not as bad as you make it out. What's so crappy quality about it? Really?

 

[Halamolo]

Already have, but I don´t hold my breath for them to answer.

"Bit sluggish"? Man that´s an understatement of the year. I´ve never seen any app on OS X with crappy quality like this! Seriously! And "they just rolled it out" doesn´t make it alright! There should be at least some kind of quality standard, before "rolling it out".

..? Whats so sluggish about it? wonky scrolling? Oh no! Use the scrollbar, problem solved. Scrolling up and down smoothly is hardly the most important thing, and will be sorted shortly I'm sure. (its webkit based afterall) Otherwise the interface is perfectly responsive here, I don't get it! (other than your game/s not working, i can see why that's an issue, lol)

Where do all the short sighted haters come from? Oh right. Stereotypical mac user-base! We've had years of experience of Valve and know they do things well. They'll fix the niggles up. It's not being an apologist, it's being realistic and giving credit where it's due. Nothing works perfectly for everyone on launch. Ever. It's not as bad as you make it out. What's so crappy quality about it? Really?

Are you from Valve Corporation? Because you seem to take the criticism a bit too personally.

Stop making excuses for something that is unacceptable!

 

[mixel]

Are you from Valve Corporation? Because you seem to take the criticism a bit too personally.

Stop making excuses for something that is unacceptable!

I was trying to get you to explain what was so unacceptable for a day old release of Steam.. ? It's hardly being an apologist - I can't see why scrolling smoothness is the end of the world. I don't have a tantrum when Apple release faulty products either.. I especially wouldn't if they were offering them for free with a selection of largely cheap games. (which I know will be fixed shortly if i have any problems)

The idea that I'm from Valve is hilarious, they have a happy userbase of millions and a lot of evangelistic users who're a *lot* more into Steam than I am. I just don't see it as being that bad. It IS acceptable for there to be problems at this stage.. Less than a week after launch.

http://blog.cocoia.com/2010/redesigning-steam-for-mac/ - That guy has a nice replacement icon for you.. And is also shows what steam will be like with a more OsX-y layout.

 

[0098386]

thanks for the tip. Nope, they still won't start. Still no word from Steam. They sure were efficient in taking my money though...

Wow you're not living up to your username.
I don't even know how many people have steam accounts, but usually they have between 2.1 and 2.5 million users logged on. Imagine if just 0.5% of people have problems with Steam and contact customer support. That's 12,500 people trying to get through to, what amounts to, as an independent game developer.
Whereas buying games is automated. There's no human there to process everything and give you the thumbs up.

This thread (if anything productive) is proof the mac community will NEVER be satisfied, and always find something to winge about.

Heh, I was thinking this too.

Granted its not perfect. But what Apple software is? Their OS - arguably the most important part of a computer has to go through several updates before it's fully usable. Tiger took ages for me, had to go back to Panther!
I'd like the scrolling to be fixed in Steam but that's it. I've played Braid, Torchlight, Civ4, the Lucas Arts games (they work much better than the PC versions!), Portal and Osmos all without a hitch. My mind is still blown at how good this all is and what it means for Mac computers.

 

[MyDesktopBroke]

They also had a pretty short open beta time. What was it, a month? Now they have a huge rush of people, all of whom will be using different computers, and we be using Steam for different things. There's going to be period where there are more complaints than answers, but imo we should stand by Valve and the other devs who are trying to tap the Mac gaming market.

On the other hand, I think everyone who downloads Steam should start mailing Apple's customer service and feedback branches to petition comprehensive OpenGL support and the option for better GPUs.

 

[Winni]

In case nobody hasn't noticed it yet, but the Steam UI isn't "native" on Windows either (and as a matter of fact never has been).

The new Steam UI was redesigned as a web interface, so it's not native on any platform, including the rumored forthcoming port to Linux.

 

[0098386]

In case nobody hasn't noticed it yet, but the Steam UI isn't "native" on Windows either (and as a matter of fact never has been).

The new Steam UI was redesigned as a web interface, so it's not native on any platform, including the rumored forthcoming port to Linux.

Bingo.
It has never looked like a Windows native app-

 

[Winni]

"Bit sluggish"? Man that´s an understatement of the year. I´ve never seen any app on OS X with crappy quality like this! Seriously!

Well, you definitely haven't tried Apple's Aperture 1.0 when it was released. Or Aperture 2.0. Or even Aperture 3.0. I'm an Aperture user since 1.0, and it always took Apple several updates to make each major release acceptable.

And the same can be said about each Mac OS X, with the .0-releases of Leopard and Snow Leopard being the crappiest OS releases in the company's history.

So, really, if Apple cannot do it right themselves, then maybe third parties deserve a bit more patience.

 

[wilycoder]

I'm not surprised at the whining taking place. Its the internet and all people do is complain...

You should be thankful you have ANY games on the mac, let alone an awesome platform like Steam.

Steam on Mac is a great thing. Give them time to iron out the bugs and until then quit bitching and shut up, you sound like a 14 year old...

 

[VPrime]

They also had a pretty short open beta time. What was it, a month? Now they have a huge rush of people, all of whom will be using different computers, and we be using Steam for different things. There's going to be period where there are more complaints than answers, but imo we should stand by Valve and the other devs who are trying to tap the Mac gaming market.

On the other hand, I think everyone who downloads Steam should start mailing Apple's customer service and feedback branches to petition comprehensive OpenGL support and the option for better GPUs.

I am guessing the short beta was only a closed "public" beta. They have a team of internal beta testers doing the real work.

Also, to the peope complaining that portal is a poor port because it runs better on windows thanOSX..
Have you ever though of the DRIVERS?!
On windows the drivers are written by the video card manufacturers and constantly updated. You are going to get the BEST performance of your video card on windows.
The video card drivers on OSX are out dated, and NOT designed for games!
Sure portal could be optimized, and VALVE WILL DO THAT!. Valve is probably one of the greatest companies when it comes to updates. They STILL support their old games like Counter strike 1.6. They are doing a massive update to Counter strike Source - a 6 year old game. Updating it to use the new engine, and giving it new features.
What company does this for free? Any one else would Re-release the game and charge you money!

Any ways, give it some time so APPLE can fix the drivers, and so Valve can update the games and steam platform. Things don't happen overnight.

 

[Mackilroy]

Already have, but I don´t hold my breath for them to answer.

"Bit sluggish"? Man that´s an understatement of the year. I´ve never seen any app on OS X with crappy quality like this! Seriously! And "they just rolled it out" doesn´t make it alright! There should be at least some kind of quality standard, before "rolling it out".

I've seen plenty of apps that were worse than this when they launched. If you think Valve simply coded it and released it, without any quality control – well, you're a moron.

Are you from Valve Corporation? Because you seem to take the criticism a bit too personally.

Stop making excuses for something that is unacceptable!

You take a software program having issues a bit too personally (and not only that, but issues a ton of other people don't have). If it's so aggravating to you, because apparently not only is Valve out to get you, they're malicious, heartless evildoers, you'd be better off uninstalling Steam and never thinking about it again.

 

[savar]

Anyone else slightly disappointed with Steam for Mac?

I've yet to boot up a game (Portal's still downloading) and already I'm slightly disappointed. I really hate the UI, it feels out of place, clunky and doesn't feel remotely native. Sorry if I'm coming off anal, but have Valve never heard of rounded corners? Button clicks are off and sometimes don't even respond. I'm sure it doesn't help that I saw this redesign last week also (http://blog.cocoia.com/2010/redesigning-steam-for-mac/).

Anyone else feel the same? Sound off below!

YES.

1. The UI STINKS. So un-mac-like.
2. It starts itself up at login BY DEFAULT. WTF. This should be an installer option that defaults to NO.
3. Why does it take so long to launch a game? What the hell is it doing? It's 5-6 seconds before the window even pops up. I have a relatively new (pre ix) MBP.
4. Can't create a dock shortcut directly into a game. You can create a "desktop" shortcut and then copy it into the dock. But either way it has to launch steam first, which is balls slow. And when you start a game, the dock shortcut isn't used, it creates a new process to actually run the game. So you have a minimum of 3 dock icons when playing a game.
5. Portal bug -- can't render through portals -- is sooo annoying. I've tried every which way I can to make it work. (It had to do with IGP versus discrete, but then they released a forced patch upgrade which f'ed it both ways. Sounds like the final fix is to boot Portal in windowed mode.)
6. Their CDN stinks. It was totally crushed on day 1. It took forever to just to even get a download started.
7. It complains about the IGP being enabled and I have to click through it every time I start the game with the IGP. Look, I get it already. Once is enough, please stop asking me. (Wouldn't be quite as a big a deal if they didn't have the portal rendering bug with the discrete graphics.)
8. Whole app is just very slow. Slow to launch initially, slow to launch games, etc.
9. The portal process is called 'hl2_osx'. Really? You couldn't rename the process to something human readable like 'Portal'?

Mind you, this is after 1-2 days of usage, playing through the one free game. I'm sure as the weeks go by I'll find more reasons to hate it.

I'm more of a console guy, anyway, I guess.

 

[jjvdhoef]

This is not a finished product. This is a beta.

Shame on them for releasing this as is.

 

[jjvdhoef]

I've seen plenty of apps that were worse than this when they launched. If you think Valve simply coded it and released it, without any quality control – well, you're a moron.

Sure seems like it. Apps that should launch, just don't. If they do launch, the games run a LOT slower than on windows.

This needed a lot of work and was pushed out too soon.

 

[PandaOnslaught]

YES.

1. The UI STINKS. So un-mac-like.
2. It starts itself up at login BY DEFAULT. WTF. This should be an installer option that defaults to NO.
3. Why does it take so long to launch a game? What the hell is it doing? It's 5-6 seconds before the window even pops up. I have a relatively new (pre ix) MBP.
4. Can't create a dock shortcut directly into a game. You can create a "desktop" shortcut and then copy it into the dock. But either way it has to launch steam first, which is balls slow. And when you start a game, the dock shortcut isn't used, it creates a new process to actually run the game. So you have a minimum of 3 dock icons when playing a game.
5. Portal bug -- can't render through portals -- is sooo annoying. I've tried every which way I can to make it work. (It had to do with IGP versus discrete, but then they released a forced patch upgrade which f'ed it both ways. Sounds like the final fix is to boot Portal in windowed mode.)
6. Their CDN stinks. It was totally crushed on day 1. It took forever to just to even get a download started.
7. It complains about the IGP being enabled and I have to click through it every time I start the game with the IGP. Look, I get it already. Once is enough, please stop asking me. (Wouldn't be quite as a big a deal if they didn't have the portal rendering bug with the discrete graphics.)
8. Whole app is just very slow. Slow to launch initially, slow to launch games, etc.
9. The portal process is called 'hl2_osx'. Really? You couldn't rename the process to something human readable like 'Portal'?

Mind you, this is after 1-2 days of usage, playing through the one free game. I'm sure as the weeks go by I'll find more reasons to hate it.

I'm more of a console guy, anyway, I guess.

1. STEAM is its own UI why does it have to be exactly mac uniform? it looks fine, if you've ever used steam in the passed, like 2004 its quite an improvement.
2. You obviously don't pay attention to anything when something installs on your computer, there was a selection to un check it, i sure as hell did.
3. they will patch to fix this, its not hard, just efficiency coding, look at AoC that game was horribly bugged now it runs like a dream
4-9 i think you have never used steam in your life.....

 

[Mackilroy]

This is not a finished product. This is a beta.

Shame on them for releasing this as is.

Sure feels finished on my machine!

People will have problems. But the vast majority of them? No.

Also, both Steam itself and games launch quickly on my computer. So please, quit acting as if your issues are shared by all. Yeah, it sucks that you have them, but not everyone does.

 

[jjvdhoef]

Sure feels finished on my machine!

People will have problems. But the vast majority of them? No.

Also, both Steam itself and games launch quickly on my computer. So please, quit acting as if your issues are shared by all. Yeah, it sucks that you have them, but not everyone does.

I'm not, and frankly, I don't care if not everyone does, thats not the point. The point is that a significant fraction are having problems. And not problems like "it runs slowly" but games not running. Games that I and others paid for. I love steam, love it on windows, but this needed more time.

BTW: anyone succeeded in running either CIV IV:beyond the sword or colonization?

 

[VPrime]

YES.

1. The UI STINKS. So un-mac-like.
2. It starts itself up at login BY DEFAULT. WTF. This should be an installer option that defaults to NO.
3. Why does it take so long to launch a game? What the hell is it doing? It's 5-6 seconds before the window even pops up. I have a relatively new (pre ix) MBP.
4. Can't create a dock shortcut directly into a game. You can create a "desktop" shortcut and then copy it into the dock. But either way it has to launch steam first, which is balls slow. And when you start a game, the dock shortcut isn't used, it creates a new process to actually run the game. So you have a minimum of 3 dock icons when playing a game.
5. Portal bug -- can't render through portals -- is sooo annoying. I've tried every which way I can to make it work. (It had to do with IGP versus discrete, but then they released a forced patch upgrade which f'ed it both ways. Sounds like the final fix is to boot Portal in windowed mode.)
6. Their CDN stinks. It was totally crushed on day 1. It took forever to just to even get a download started.
7. It complains about the IGP being enabled and I have to click through it every time I start the game with the IGP. Look, I get it already. Once is enough, please stop asking me. (Wouldn't be quite as a big a deal if they didn't have the portal rendering bug with the discrete graphics.)
8. Whole app is just very slow. Slow to launch initially, slow to launch games, etc.
9. The portal process is called 'hl2_osx'. Really? You couldn't rename the process to something human readable like 'Portal'?

Mind you, this is after 1-2 days of usage, playing through the one free game. I'm sure as the weeks go by I'll find more reasons to hate it.

I'm more of a console guy, anyway, I guess.

1)The UI is also UN WINDOWS like. It is STEAM. They did this on purpose. It has NEVER looked like the rest of the OS. Don't expect this to change EVER. THey will probably polish it up a bit though (like the weird steam file manager)

2)Annoying, but easy to change in settings. This is also the same for windows. Some people like it, some don't. This isn't the only software in the world that does this.. At least they give you an easy way to disable.

3)It is actually doing quite a few things. Setting up the engine, loading your config files, checking if you are online, loading the renderer. You are not launching Adium here.. This preloading helps you form getting into gameplay faster.
I would rather wait before the game starts than stare at even MORE loading screens inside the game.

4)This will never change (well creating the dock shortcut part probably will). Steam HAS to load. That is the DRM and gateway to the game. The game does not exist with out steam. They are one.

5)Submit the bug to Valve so it can be fixed. Valve is VERY good with bug fixes. I bet it will probably fixed by next wednesday

6)I don't know what you mean by CDN? My download went very smoothly. I downloaded portal in about 15 minutes (full thing) with no slow downs or hiccups.

8)First version.. Relax. Brand new GUI for both windows and mac. Brand new app for mac. When steam first launched for windows it was quite slow as well.. Now it is much faster. Again- Valve is quite good with bug fixes. You will not be waiting years for things to be fixed.

9)This is the same on Windows. But really...... who cares!?! you playing the FREAKING GAME NOT STARING AT A PROCESS SCREEN!!!!!
You complaining about this is like Me complaining about your username!

 

[VPrime]

I'm not, and frankly, I don't care if not everyone does, thats not the point. The point is that a significant fraction are having problems. And not problems like "it runs slowly" but games not running. Games that I and others paid for. I love steam, love it on windows, but this needed more time.

BTW: anyone succeeded in running either CIV IV:beyond the sword or colonization?

Don't like it, go play in windows. Your purchases will work there.