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The beauty of Steam on OS X...

palebluedot

palebluedot

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 29, 2008
738
160
I still can not believe that Steam is coming to OS X. I remember when I first got a Mac in 2008 and started coming to these forums I began to read and voice the stress I felt being a hardcore gamer who switched to Apple.

Mac OS X is a great operating system but it was a PITA to have to disrupt my workflow to reboot for an hour of TF2, L4D, or 30 minutes of CS:S. I remember some EPIC debates on this forum about those of us feeling that way being lazy, not needing to own Macs, etc. On the other side, people defended the need and dream for gaming to take off. It was not but six months ago that several threads declared Mac gaming 100% dead with the slow departure of porting companies, death of UT3 for OS X, and the increasing CIDERization of gaming via WINE ports.

Well friends, I am in shock and so excited that Steam is soon to arrive to our beloved doorstep. The fact that my Time Machine will back up my games, I can use iChat and play my iTunes music without rebooting, and I can leave work open while gaming. This is AMAZING. Valve (and Steam) truly is one of the greatest gaming companies on Earth.

I just felt like marking my excitement and inviting others to do the same! :D Huzzah!
 
Ditto. Before I made the switch, I too was hooked on Half-Life 2 Deathmatch and HL2 and all the previous HL games. And yeah, it was a pain to reboot into Windows just to use Steam.

And I'll finally get to play Portal 2 and Episode 3 on my Mac :D

Yay!
 
palebluedot said:
I still can not cannot that Steam is coming to OS X.
Click to expand...

Huh??

Beyond that weird sentence I agree that Steam for OS X is going to be nice. I hate having to reboot to play games, so I almost gave up on playing L4D. Cant wait till it comes out.

PS There are many threads like this already in the forum. You probably should have posted in one of those instead of making new thread just to show your happiness with Steam.
 
Ice-Cube said:
Yes, the daily rebooting is taking a toll on my internal hard drive. I have already gotten it replaced twice due to failure.
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Wait what. I have 3 macs that get rebooted frequently into different OS's (takes 30 seconds?) and are shut down every night, yet their hard drives are perfect. 2 of them are 4 year old computers! I honestly don't believe that rebooting is the fault there.

Isn't there already a thread where people post their opinions on Mac Steam?

The big thread is here.
Deleting Windows now Steam is coming to Mac, here.
 
Dagless said:
Wait what. I have 3 macs that get rebooted frequently into different OS's (takes 30 seconds?) and are shut down every night, yet their hard drives are perfect. 2 of them are 4 year old computers! I honestly don't believe that rebooting is the fault there.

Isn't there already a thread where people post their opinions on Mac Steam?

The big thread is here.
Deleting Windows now Steam is coming to Mac, here.
Click to expand...


I have mine turned on 24/7 and reboot on a daily basis. Perhaps that is the reason.
 
Ice-Cube said:
I have mine turned on 24/7 and reboot on a daily basis. Perhaps that is the reason.
Click to expand...

Same for one of mine. I stream data, spend days encoding video files, use my internal drive as a scratch disk, I reboot between OSX and XP at least once a day, I use it as a PVR or TV torrent downloader, I share mine and others freeware games on torrent 24/7, I check for viruses twice a week, I defrag once a week, my work documents range from 100mb-8gb and are in use every day, I run high-end games an hour a day. My other machine gets around 3/4 of that punishment.
Rebooting will have a negligible effect on a HDD's lifespan unless you're doing something very wrong.
 
gumbyx84 said:
Huh??

Beyond that weird sentence I agree that Steam for OS X is going to be nice. I hate having to reboot to play games, so I almost gave up on playing L4D. Cant wait till it comes out.

PS There are many threads like this already in the forum. You probably should have posted in one of those instead of making new thread just to show your happiness with Steam.
Click to expand...

Typo, sorry!

As for the thread, I noticed one dealing with the tech issues but didn't see one for general talk about the "cultural" point behind Steam coming to OS X. Primarily for those of us who had the back and forth arguments for the last few years about Mac gaming on OS X + Steam and Mac gaming being dead. Admins are more than welcome to merge this thread if there is a better place for it. Sorry! :eek:
 
I have to agree.. This makes me soo happy. I was huge into PC gaming for years.. I decided to make the 100% conversion(sacrifice of games) to OSX a few months ago by replacing my gaming rig with the new iMac(used a macbook pro). When I saw this news I thought someone upstairs was definitely looking out for me haha. :apple:
 
What would be really cool is if you could have just one Steam folder to keep both your pc and mac games in and they would launch either way. If your are mac only, then not so cool. But if you play both Windows and Mac games, very cool because not only where there be occasions when you don't have to boot into windows, you'll also save some disk space.

If you need to have a separate Steam Mac game install from a Steam PC game install for the same title, I'll be interested to hear if there are any substantial performance differences between the game running in Windows and running on Mac. If not, for the Mac compatible games I'll keep a single install in Mac Steam and avoid the reboot.
 
It's freaking awesome I reckon. I don't have a bootcamp installation of windows and could not be stuffed with it.

I do miss playing my older games such as CS:S and TF2, but not enough to reboot.
 
Huntn said:
What would be really cool is if you could have just one Steam folder to keep both your pc and mac games in and they would launch either way. If your are mac only, then not so cool. But if you play both Windows and Mac games, very cool because not only where there be occasions when you don't have to boot into windows, you'll also save some disk space.

If you need to have a separate Steam Mac game install from a Steam PC game install for the same title, I'll be interested to hear if there are any substantial performance differences between the game running in Windows and running on Mac. If not, for the Mac compatible games I'll keep a single install in Mac Steam and avoid the reboot.
Click to expand...

That would be neat.

If they use the Steam Cloud saved games and settings could be used across platforms, that'd be good too.
 
They already let you keep your settings across different PCs, IIRC – no reason why they would extend this to a different platform.
 
Mackilroy said:
They already let you keep your settings across different PCs, IIRC – no reason why they would extend this to a different platform.
Click to expand...

Only for L4D and L4D2, though, right?

I'd like to see it for all games, or at least the majority. Makes life so much easier.
 
lythium said:
amen sir. down with winblows. the day microsoft finally closes its doors for good will be an international holiday for the IT community.
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Nooo! Then I'll be out of a job! :'(

I make a living on windows' problems. (Some of the worst come from their own software! Outlook, I'm looking at you....The other half come from Adobe Pro).

Anyway back on topic I too cannot wait till it comes out even though I actually hate Steam because it requires a constant online connection (offline mode doesn't work. Trust me. It still will want to reconnect after a month). It will be nice to see games come to make and the fact that if a game is made for steam it'll run on windows and mac supposedly.

I REALLY want Portal 2....
 
lythium said:
amen sir. down with winblows. the day microsoft finally closes its doors for good will be an international holiday for the IT community.
Click to expand...

your insane if you truly believe that, it will only hurt the entire it community whether you want to believe it or not.
 
roliath said:
your insane if you truly believe that, it will only hurt the entire it community whether you want to believe it or not.
Click to expand...

think about how much less clutter from spyware/virus traffic/500 windows updates a day/etc will be floating across internet routers worldwide. its a lot of waste.
 
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Not yours, can't have.
 
ScottishDuck, are those games listed in your steam beta all Mac games, or does the list mix in your Windows games as well?
 
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