Disappointed with Steam for Mac?

Valve are treating Mac as a Tier 1 platform. Steam has been available for less than 24 hours on that platform.

Yes there will be bugs and glitches, but yes they will be fixed.

I think some people need to grasp some perspective. Steam might not be perfect in it's current guise, but for the first time on Mac it is here, and Valve have made a firm commitment to support it as much as they support their other platforms. This is still a massive step forward.

Heck, they're even giving us one of the most critically acclaimed titles in their catalogue for free!

As a Mac and a Playstation 3 owner, I'm delighted we've finally got Steam at all! Personally, I'm willing to be patient with them over it.

Sodom said:

So far Im not impressed. The games included with it on launch were a joke except for tourchlight and Portal. Where in the holy hell is L4D, L4D II, KF, HL and TF?!?!!? Valves own games no less!! What about Steamplay!??! I have these games on windoze steam already....they are the only reason I dual boot windows. It's like a cruel joke, they delayed it for nothing, only to deliver this client with 2 playable games!!! Valve pisses me off so much they lie all the time with every announcement they make. All valves game will be available at launch.....Steam and it's library will be available in april....the list goes on, they are so full of ****. Valve are either good at full of **** statements or are lazier than a cut buck....

Get some good games on steam QUICK and stop f*cking around with mac users.

When I launched it and logged in the following occured:

Killing Floor appeared as a playable game, started to download then vanished. Portal began to download and stopped, not it wont resume or do anything. Tourch Light I haven't tried yet and the rest are a joke...something you would buy in a 5 dollar value pack from wal-mart. Steam also crashed on me like 7 times.

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Holy rage and entitlement. It's the first day of something that's never been attempted before calm down. Mac Users shouldn't immediately expect that these games are going to run smoothly on their macs when Apple computers are far far far from sophisticated gaming machines. Macs are great for everything else just not gaming.

msjones said:

Running at 30fps with dips to 26 fps on these settings:

Just on training level at mo, I can more than likely expect heavy drops in actions scenes. Maybe more tweaking to be done.

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Disable vertical sync, that will save you a lot of FPS.

Well, I don't really like the interface but I only see it for short times just to launch my games. It's not like my webbrowser, which I use for several hours a day. It is a little buggy, but it will get fixed. What I absolutely don't like is that it stores all it's crap in the Documents folder. The Documents folder is for user created files, NOT for "Application Support" files. Use the (~)/Library/Application Support folder for that Valve!

I've seen sluggish Steam Window servers to. I'm sure there is a surge of activity bogging things down.

G-Force said:

What I absolutely don't like is that it stores all it's crap in the Documents folder. The Documents folder is for user created files, NOT for "Application Support" files. Use the (~)/Library/Application Support folder for that Valve!

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This. That's the Windows spirit behind it. Hate it too. What can we do? Ask Valve nicely.

Does Steam directly download into the documents folder, or is there a download directory? Time Machine is churning like a demon during the downloads, and while I don'e want to exclude the program files, I would like to exclude the downloads from being backed up during the download.

I love it but I am hoping for improvements. The performance is the only thing I am complaining about. For example there is NO reason I should not be able to totally max out portal at 1920x1200 the GT 330m GPU scores higher then the desktop 8600GT on 3dmark and I can max out portal at 1920x1200 on an 8600gt ( on windows ) but when I try that with a GT 330m I have to lower the res and some of the settings to 1600x1000 and it still stutters here and there. Thats crazy ether apple needs to fix there video drivers or steam needs to optimize this stuff... however besides that I absolutely love it and have already purchased a few games I understand that the software is new to the mac platform and so I am expecting them to fix these problems eventually.

Running great for me on a Late '09 21.5" iMac with the ATI videocard. I'm running at default setting and Native resolution.

As for Steam UI not being remotely native... It never has been. When you run Steam for Windows it's not even remotely native either. Just wait for someone to make a native looking skin.

gatepc said:

I love it but I am hoping for improvements. The performance is the only thing I am complaining about. For example there is NO reason I should not be able to totally max out portal at 1920x1200 the GT 330m GPU scores higher then the desktop 8600GT on 3dmark and I can max out portal at 1920x1200 on an 8600gt ( on windows ) but when I try that with a GT 330m I have to lower the res and some of the settings to 1600x1000 and it still stutters here and there. Thats crazy ether apple needs to fix there video drivers or steam needs to optimize this stuff... however besides that I absolutely love it and have already purchased a few games I understand that the software is new to the mac platform and so I am expecting them to fix these problems eventually.

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Come visit the new Mac forums on steampowered.com - players there have been looking at the first release and tweaking out settings.

One good thread to look at there:

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1266144

Steam / Mac forum home URL:

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=890

I'm not disappointed. Not one bit. It's saved me loads of hard disk space, and soon I'll have the power of TF2 on my hands.

It can only get better, and I think this is a damn good start.

G-Force said:

Well, I don't really like the interface but I only see it for short times just to launch my games. It's not like my webbrowser, which I use for several hours a day. It is a little buggy, but it will get fixed. What I absolutely don't like is that it stores all it's crap in the Documents folder. The Documents folder is for user created files, NOT for "Application Support" files. Use the (~)/Library/Application Support folder for that Valve!

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Used to be worse, it used to store it at the root of your boot drive!

That is even worse, both are not-done. This is one of the reasons I don't use Microsoft software because they always put that damn Microsoft User Data folder in MY Documents folder.

Here is a nice read for Valve and Microsoft -- "Don’t Pollute User Space":
http://developer.apple.com/mac/libr....html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40001411-BAJHCHJI

Also.. the icon is too big, another nice read:
http://www.artofadambetts.com/weblog/?p=105

Don't get me wrong, I love the fact that we have Steam now. I can't wait to play Left 4 Dead (2) on my Mac. But the above points should be fixed in the future to make this app even better than it already is if you ask me.

REM314 said:

Holy rage and entitlement. It's the first day of something that's never been attempted before calm down. Mac Users shouldn't immediately expect that these games are going to run smoothly on their macs when Apple computers are far far far from sophisticated gaming machines. Macs are great for everything else just not gaming.

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Neither are PC's...DUH.

Im just sick to death of valve making statements that are 99% of the time full of **** statements. As a customer I expect if valve releases a statement saying "Steam and all of valves games available on mac in April" they should be available in April. If they say valves games available at May 12th launch...I expect that not one valve "game" at launch, and not even one of the games mac users what steam for mac for in the first place.

So yes, Im a little pissed off at valves trademark lack of commitment to it's following and valve time ********. I have an easy way to eliminate valve time: Not going to make deadlines....don't make full of **** statements to begin with.

anyone know when steamplay will actually be functional with games you would actually buy like Killing floor, L4D, L4D II, TF, Half Life.???

Sodom said:

anyone know when steamplay will actually be functional with games you would actually buy like Killing floor, L4D, L4D II, TF, Half Life.???

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TF2 will ship on a Wednesday, as will the other Source games.

Sodom said:

Neither are PC's...DUH.

Im just sick to death of valve making statements that are 99% of the time full of **** statements. As a customer I expect if valve releases a statement saying "Steam and all of valves games available on mac in April" they should be available in April. If they say valves games available at May 12th launch...I expect that not one valve "game" at launch, and not even one of the games mac users what steam for mac for in the first place.

So yes, Im a little pissed off at valves trademark lack of commitment to it's following and valve time ********. I have an easy way to eliminate valve time: Not going to make deadlines....don't make full of **** statements to begin with.

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Well things happen I suppose. It's either them having to not fulfill what they originally promise. Or go blizzards route and just not say anything until very close to the date or even apples way of just not saying anything whatsoever. Personally I don't know which i prefer. I can say one thing, apples secrecy has made me not buy their products on a few occasions where I would buy an apple product but not know if they'll put out what I want so I buy the other product. Bothers me beyond measure.

G-Force said:

That is even worse, both are not-done. This is one of the reasons I don't use Microsoft software because they always put that damn Microsoft User Data folder in MY Documents folder.

Here is a nice read for Valve and Microsoft -- "Don’t Pollute User Space":
http://developer.apple.com/mac/libr....html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40001411-BAJHCHJI

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I'm not disagreeing that the Documents folder isn't any better... but it isn't quite so cut and dry either.

I consider polluting the system space even worse than user space. At least in the context of putting it in ~/Documents/Steam versus / is that the user knows what can be cleaned up in ~/Documents/Steam. Even if it isn't where it should go. Trying to clean up 5+GB of crap out of '/' when it isn't even in a folder is a bit of a nightmare.

Also, we aren't talking about an app with an uninstaller, or that only keeps around a few MB of resources that get installed. We are talking on the order of 5GB for Portal + Source. If you don't offer the user a good way to access and delete this folder when they go to uninstall your app, you've polluted the file structure in a way that isn't obvious to the end user.

I'll take obvious pollution to a 5GB folder hiding somewhere that a normal user will have difficulty finding if they aren't using something like AppZapper (if that still exists). There needs to be a better solution to handling large caches and application support folders, which currently doesn't exist. Apple isn't providing it, and their guidelines are only really useful to a point when it doesn't offer guidance on how to handle these disk space hogs.

Neither putting put in ~/Library or ~/Documents is ideal, IMO. At least with the way the OS currently works, lacking an uninstall mechanism anyways. I suppose Steam could throw in an uninstall.pkg though.

You can delete games from within Steam, so I don't see this as a big problem to be honest. Disadvantage is that you need to remove the games from within Steam first before you can trash Steam.app. I'd rather do this than have the Steam Content folder polluting my Documents folder.

The option to store Steam Games in a folder of the user's choice would be nice.

G-Force said:

You can delete games from within Steam, so I don't see this as a big problem to be honest. Disadvantage is that you need to remove the games from within Steam first before you can trash Steam.app. I'd rather do this than have the Steam Content folder polluting my Documents folder.

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You can, but again, it isn't ideal because not every user is gonna think to delete everything before deleting the .app. It has the same flaws as putting the folder in ~/Library. You can completely miss the extra steps beyond "Trash the .app" that users have been conditioned to do with OS X.

G-Force said:

Here is a nice read for Valve and Microsoft -- "Don’t Pollute User Space":
http://developer.apple.com/mac/libr....html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40001411-BAJHCHJI

Click to expand...

I agree with this rule. But don't GarageBand and iTunes also pollute the user's "Music" folder and don't iChat, iPhoto and Photo Booth pollute the "Pictures" folder?

knweiss said:

I agree with this rule. But don't GarageBand and iTunes also pollute the user's "Music" folder and don't iChat, iPhoto and Photo Booth pollute the "Pictures" folder?

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With user data. I add an MP3 to iTunes, it puts it in Music. I add a Photo to iPhoto, and it puts it in Photos. What it doesn't do is put Application Support files like fonts, images, iDVD templates, etc into those locations.

iChat is very likely borderline on this policy though. It's avatar icons are clearly Application Support, so they are stored there, but they still spit that alias (which you can delete freely it seems).

knweiss said:

I agree with this rule. But don't GarageBand and iTunes also pollute the user's "Music" folder and don't iChat, iPhoto and Photo Booth pollute the "Pictures" folder?

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With iTunes you can point the Music folder to wherever you want it.

I'm happy they've released it, but there will need to be many updates in the future.
Like somebody on the first page said... the design doesn't look like the usual OS X application yet.