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Steam coming to Mac OS X

Discussion in 'Gaming Forum' started by Desides, Mar 8, 2010.

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  1. Desides

    Desides Well-Known Member

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    All of a sudden, Valve has a monopoly on a burgeoning Mac game market. Steam is being released on OS X in April, accompanied by Valve's back catalog.

    If you already own a Valve game on Steam, say Half-Life 2, you can install Steam on your Mac and download it free of charge. All future Valve games will be dual-platform releases, available immediately for the Mac along with the usual Windows version. Portal 2 will be the first dual-platform release in November.

    This also means that Mac versions of games can play with Windows versions of games. If you're playing L4D2 on the PC, half of your group might be Mac players while the other half are still on Windows.

    Lastly, Valve is going to help the various third parties who sell their games on Steam to create native Mac versions. This means that Valve is more or less the de facto largest Mac game publisher on the planet. I would imagine they could make an absolute killing licensing the Source engine now.

    2010 is a pretty freaking awesome year for video games thus far.
     
  2. mor911

    mor911 pooping

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    Mor likes this
     
  3. unifiedtheory

    unifiedtheory Sub Pending Luxury Box

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    This is very interesting to me...the new Mac user (bought it on Saturday).
     
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  4. mor911

    mor911 pooping

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    Welcome. You'll never look back. I made the change (MacBook Pro) and I love it.
     
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  5. mor911

    mor911 pooping

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  6. unifiedtheory

    unifiedtheory Sub Pending Luxury Box

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    Dude...it took me about an hour, during the setup to ask myself "why the hell have I been suffering through Windows for so long"?

    I got the 21.5" iMac and it is truly amazing. I've only had 2 "switching over" issues thusfar.

    1.) All my email on my dinosaur was through outlook express and OE uses a file extension that ONLY OE uses. I've tried a variety of suggestions on converting the files for Mac Mail (or any mail program...none of them accept the OE prefix) only to fail. My last resort is to go through my entire email inbox (1,000's of kept email) and forward them to myself so I can open them up in Mac Mail....PAINFUL.

    2.) I use Photoshop a LOT but my version (7.0) is Windows specific. I have to install Windows XP (with SP 2 installed) through Bootcamp and then install Photoshop 7.0 on that section of the drive unless I can find a Mac version of Photoshop for a reasonable price, which is simply impossible.
     
  7. mor911

    mor911 pooping

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    Dunno if you've heard of Crossover yet, but essentially its an app that virtually runs windows in order to run Win apps in OSX. It has programs that is built into Crossover that the developers test to make sure they run well AND it allows you to attempt to run "unsupported" Windows programs... In my experience, as long as it's not a crazy game, they run well. All of the programs I use to rip off 360 games are Windows programs (ImgBurn, ABGX, GrabIt, etc) and I use them ALL on my Mac flawlessly.

    Going through the "Install Software" area of Crossover I noticed that Photoshop 7 is fully supported ;)

    http://www.codeweavers.com/compatibility/browse/name?app_id=8
     
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  8. Desides

    Desides Well-Known Member

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    This is Microsoft's fault, not Apple's. There are a few convoluted ways to get your email from one format to the other, like this.

    Use virtualization (Crossover, VMWare Fusion, Parallels... or Virtualbox for free) and get your version of Photoshop up and running that way. There'll be a performance hit, but it's better than nothing.

    For a more long-term solution, you should probably consider buying the Mac version of the upcoming CS5.
     
    unifiedtheory likes this.
  9. DaFish

    DaFish Well-Known Member

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    I have really been putting forth an effort to use OSX and I am just not feeling it. This is not saying I am just tossing it to the side because I love having the option of using multiple OS's. I guess I just haven't found anything that I specifically need OSX for yet.
     
  10. unifiedtheory

    unifiedtheory Sub Pending Luxury Box

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    Dude, that is FANTASTIC! I'm all over that! You may have saved me much heartache.
     
  11. unifiedtheory

    unifiedtheory Sub Pending Luxury Box

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    I messed around with Eudora on the Mac (I have my OE files on there for backup) and could not get it to do what I needed it to do. Installing it on my dinosaur and using it to convert the files went right over my head. Considering I've got at least 8 hours in this adventure thusfar I should have thought about it....thanks Des!

    If my site design work picks up again I will buy a Mac specific version of Photoshop, I'm just that type of person. The thing is, the end of the industry I work mostly in was HAMMERED by the recession. One guy I worked for went totally out of business and the other guy (2 people had me building 10-12 sites a year) is hanging on by a fingernail. As an example, in 2008 I built 6 brand new sites, totally renovated 4 others and built promo and banners for those and a dozen others. I was working 4 hours a day on weeknights and 20 hours every weekend for the year. In 2009 I built one site, renovated zero sites and built no banners and did maybe a week of promo materials. For now PS is just for me to keep my skills sharp.
     
  12. unifiedtheory

    unifiedtheory Sub Pending Luxury Box

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    Mike owes The Mor the drink of his choice when he makes his way to a game in the next 2 seasons. Just installed Crossover and then installed PS7 and it works PERFECTLY. Best part is once you close Crossover it all goes away, no "true" Windows install on the machine....brilliant. I owe you.
     
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  13. mor911

    mor911 pooping

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    Glad I can help man. Crossover has helped me completely eliminate Windows from my house. I only use it at work because I have to. Warp's company even uses Crossover to run their billing software that is designed for Windows :yes:
     
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  14. fins4o8

    fins4o8 Mac FTW!

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    Adobe has a program where you can trade in your Windows version for a Mac version. I will look for the link once I'm home and in front of a computer.

    Check this link out for a future online gaming service. Would be interesting to how well games perform on the 8600 & 9400/9600gt model MBPs. Downside is you have to pay a monthly $15 fee but might be worth it if their game catalog has all the games you like to play.

    http://iphone.macnn.com/articles/10/03/10/onlive.to.stream.modern.games.to.pcs.macs/

    I might have to start buying games from Steam once they come out with a Mac version.

    I wasn't able to find the exact adobe link for cross-grades but this link will explain how to do it.

    http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/adobe/f/crossgrade.htm
     
  15. dolfan32323

    dolfan32323 ty xphinfanx

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    One suggestion I have if you need photoshop on your mac (crossover is fine) is to see if any local colleges/universities near you have apple stores on campus. I work my college's Apple store and we offer photoshop for mac at a discounted price, and it is available to whoever walks in. Might want to give that a shot.
     
  16. DaFish

    DaFish Well-Known Member

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    Just wondering about your 360 projects. Are you gonna be able to keep up with that?

    I am going to try and use OSX for the rest of the week to see what I am missing.
     
  17. mor911

    mor911 pooping

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    I've been all Mac since before thanksgiving, and I've been up to par I think ;)
     
  18. DaFish

    DaFish Well-Known Member

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    It's offically snowing in hell. I recommended a Mac to a lady I was troubleshooting with today. She had the money and no time or experience to deal with security software.

    I have gotten a very good feel of the OS the last few days and I have to say that a Mac cannot be my primary machine. It just feels like I am limited and confined kinda like someone sliced the testicles off of a Linux box. This is not a bad thing for users that want a nice solid Unix based OS without knowing a lot about Unix itself.

    Now to the subject of the thread and I didnt mean to hijack it or anything. I am glad to see Mac users will finally get some gaming love without having to emulate or run them with virtual apps.
     
  19. mor911

    mor911 pooping

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    I got steam going on my Mac last night. They're giving away Portal for free to draw in users (success!). I even bought Torchlight to support the cause.

    So far so good. My next Steam purchase should be Civ5 later this year.
     
  20. DaFish

    DaFish Well-Known Member

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  21. BuckeyeKing

    BuckeyeKing Wolves DYNASTY!!!!

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    Also Portal is free for everyone until May 25th.
     
  22. Desides

    Desides Well-Known Member

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    Having played through Portal twice on my Mac now, I can say the experience is good, but not great. It's about what you'd expect given the infancy of Mac gaming: performance isn't as good as on Windows, the game selection is pretty scarce, there are some frame rate issues, etc.

    This is a really good start, though. I'd say Steam for Mac is launching in a better position than Steam for Windows did way back when. Updates should be pretty aggressive, since Valve has promised new game launches every week. I'm guessing this week's release will be Team Fortress 2 and two or three indie games.

    As long as Apple consistently and quickly updates its graphics drivers and enhances its OpenGL support (10.6.3 had OpenGL updates, 10.6.4 has graphics driver updates), Mac gaming should truly take off within a year. We've got the entire Valve back catalog coming (sooner or later), Starcraft 2, and Civilization V. That's a relatively strong 2010 for a platform that did not have gaming on its radar going into this year. Going forward, the real test will be simultaneous releases. I realize that PC games are starting to lag behind their console counterparts in release dates (Assassin's Creed 2) presuming they don't get canceled outright (Alan Wake) but you have to think the paradigm of multi-platform releases leaping from the console world to the computer world can and will revive computer gaming to a certain extent.

    A world where the latest and greatest game comes out on the same day for the PS3, 360, Windows, and OS X sounds pretty good to me.
     
  23. Desides

    Desides Well-Known Member

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    Bump.

    Team Fortress 2 is available on the Mac now. Log in this weekend on a Mac and you get a set of earbuds that the in-game classes can wear. Also, it's free until Monday on both the Mac and PC. Yeah, the best multiplayer game in existence right now is free to play all weekend. Call of What?
     
  24. mor911

    mor911 pooping

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    i actually bought TF2 on steam
     
  25. Desides

    Desides Well-Known Member

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    You paid for a game?

    [​IMG]
     
  26. mor911

    mor911 pooping

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    They were running a special and it was $2.

    Side note, I'm loving that Valve is showing Mac so much love.
     
  27. Desides

    Desides Well-Known Member

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    [​IMG]
     

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