If stereotypical mac user-base means high quality expectations and low tolerance for ox manure, then heck yes, sign me up as a "stereotypical mac user".
Ox manure? Seriously! The fact that people are obsessing over icons and scrolling smoothness.. Geez. Give it time, it's not that important in the scale of things. I suspect Valve thought the same.
I too enjoy nicely designed, smooth apps, but I have the patience to accept that any teething problems will be addressed shortly. Also, non-native isn't inherently bad as long as it's well designed and responsive. Adobe CS suite does some strange things and Apple's pro apps do strange things when it comes to the HIGs. Steams interface, once the slight bugs have been addressed will be great whether SOME people want a fully "native looking" client or not. Many would rather have a consistent, flexible interface that works in a unified way across platforms. Neither side is "right" - there are advantages to both styles.
osX file dialogues etc would be nice, but we're still less than a week after launch.
The Steam client is some of the most shoddy port I have ever seen, and while the "stereotypical Windows gamer base" is able to swallow a non-native interface and all it's related bugs us stereotypical mac users will continue to demand a reasonable native experience and not bend over and feel grateful simply because Valve is now bringing more games to the Mac.
The most shoddy port you've ever seen? I'm guessing you don't own any consoles? No, a lot of people just outright LIKE the steam interface, just because you don't, and many others dont doesnt mean they're bending over. Also In my experience the Windows version isn't buggy, so the non-nativeness of the GUI has nothing to do with the buginess. The bugs are simply to do with the newness of the port. I still dont see it as shoddy at all. It's smooth here. Other than little bugs and the fact you think it's ugly, what's so bad?
It's not as if all these games save for Portal, Torchlight and a few other indies didn't already exist for the Mac. We've been playing Civ IV and Braid for years. And now it is becoming clear that Portal and it's source ilk are not really going to be up to scratch compared to a reboot into BootCamp. Frankly, if the UI experience is going to be this shoddy anyway I might as well suffer Windows and actually get to play the games as well as my hardware allows.*
Umm.. Steam is the biggest distribution platform on the PC, and will likely cause a lot more developers to support the Mac where previously they wouldn't. You could equally argue that Windows doesn't need Steam (in fact it'd be even more of a valid point there as they actually, you know, have some games? But it'd be a moot point. Steam is successful because it's of high quality and has a good feature-set. Things like achievements and integrated social features mean a lot to gamers. Being able to send game invites to players over Steam is one of it's killer features, as well as clan/group management. You can't underestimate these features and brush off Steam as just another store for game purchases. They do deserve some degree of respect and our faith here. They have delivered and will continue to do so. It might not look 100% like a standard osX app at the end of the day but that doesn't have to mean it's worse for it.
Also.. We already know Killing Floor and Red Orchestra are coming
link, and this is just the start.
OpenGL game performance will improve shortly, I'm sure.. As it is, on my Macs Portal has handled great with only a small FPS hit.. The convenience overrides the slight performance drop for me.
