Not even Valve Time can contain my excitement for this. I have been waiting for this day ever since I switched to Mac! 
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Steam for Mac Details: Native Performance, Chipset Limitations, Closed Beta Underway
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I signed up on the first day as well and received my invite about a week ago. I have a 13in 2009 MBP and 15in 2009 MBP. I also have an active steam account, mainly CS:S. So, for the past week I've been beta testing Portal (a game I've never played before and don't own) on my 15in.
So far the experience has been smooth, but I'm looking forward to playing CS:S and HL2.
FYI, steam forces you to enable access for assistive devices and switch to the more powerful video card before you play.
Steam Customer Service
I use steam on WIN7/Bootcamp and they are VERY slow to respond to problems. However, they do, at least in my case, respond....It just takes forever. Just to let you know.
I use steam on WIN7/Bootcamp and they are VERY slow to respond to problems. However, they do, at least in my case, respond....It just takes forever. Just to let you know.
Hot Hot Hot
I forgot to report, that my iMac runs real hot during gaming sessions on the bootcamp partition.
I forgot to report, that my iMac runs real hot during gaming sessions on the bootcamp partition.
Count me in as another disappointed I wasn't selected for the beta. I've got the Valve Complete Pack and a Mac Pro, iMac and MacBook Pro. Figured I'd be right up their alley.
Oh well, can't wait for it to be officially released, doesn't look like it'll actually happen in April though.
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Oh well, can't wait for it to be officially released, doesn't look like it'll actually happen in April though.
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I have a sniffing suspicion that the trend is too similar to other "Mac Game Provider" company EA. Where the use of Cider meant that they could not use the GMA950 series.
If they are being run using Cider you can expect a PS3/360 port like experience with laggy frame-rates and random glitches. Or hell, not even being run with Cider. The lead designer at Valve has already expressed his dislike of anything not Windows.
Maybe the recent meetings between Apple and ATI, and with the iMac refresh due soon this could be a few clues as to what may be coming.
After all, why put all this pressure on Valve for a Mac version of Steam if the hardware is not going to be available to use it to it's full potential.
Portal was stunning, looking forward to Portal 2. But I am glad I have my quad core Windows PC for my gaming
God, yes. Couldn't agree more. At least give us the option for a more badass GPU card in the MacBook Pro and iMac.
I would assume that this is because only games based on Valve's source engine are platform independent (hence: run on both Windows and Mac and possible later Linux). But as Steam offers much more games that only run Windows they need that icon to identify the cross platform games from the Windows (or Mac?) only ones. That could also mean that non-cross platform games need to be bought twice if you would like to play them on both Mac as well as on Windows as they are two separate products, even though they are the same game. In contrast a Source Engine based game is a platform independent game which is able to run on different platforms due to the fact the Source Engine (and not the game itself) has been ported to different platforms.
I think this will also be a huge selling point for Valve's Source Engine (together with it's Steam platform) to Game company's (bigger market and more profit if you develop your game using Valve's Source Engine). It would be nice if this move causes the Unreal engine to be rewritten to as well
Funny... A couple of times a year me and my mates have a LAN party. While they carry all there huge computer cases, monitors, speakers and more gear along in their cars or have their wives/girlfriends drop them off, I just put my MacBook Pro, headphones, mouse and a USB numpad in my bag and cycle (or Ducati) over and outperform their machines with my MacBook Pro
Perhaps you can get it looking better by buying a game PC with state of the art graphics cards in SLI, but it looks good enough for me on my MBP and it's surely fast enough. Also, I have bought state of the art graphics cards for premium prices in the past, but within 6 to 12 months these things are obsolete again. I'd rather get a little bit older GPU and still run smoothly than paying premium price... But -of course- I won't complain if Apple would provide us with better GPU's in our MBP's
A friend set up a dedicated game server hosting a couple of games on the LAN. When the thing didn't do what it was supposed to do I hosted a server on my MBP over WiFi and the players had less latency playing against my MBP (on which I was gaming myself as well) than on that crappy dedicated game server.
So, to make a long story short... It's extremely unlikely I will ever be buying a game pc (or a PC altogether) in the near future as my MBP can handle it very well...
If they can port Source (which was DirectX only) it shouldn't be that hard to port the DirectX+OpenGL Goldsrc engine.
They can't physically fit a better GPU in the iMac. The mobile 4850 is the best thing they can put in it. The mobile 5xxx line is a disappointment.
Per the original article, they aren't using Cider. Thanks for adding value though!!
Funny... A couple of times a year me and my mates have a LAN party. While they carry all there huge computer cases, monitors, speakers and more gear along in their cars or have their wives/girlfriends drop them off, I just put my MacBook Pro, headphones, mouse and a USB numpad in my bag and cycle (or Ducati) over and outperform their machines with my MacBook Pro
Perhaps you can get it looking better by buying a game PC with state of the art graphics cards in SLI, but it looks good enough for me on my MBP and it's surely fast enough. Also, I have bought state of the art graphics cards for premium prices in the past, but within 6 to 12 months these things are obsolete again. I'd rather get a little bit older GPU and still run smoothly than paying premium price... But -of course- I won't complain if Apple would provide us with better GPU's in our MBP's
A friend set up a dedicated game server hosting a couple of games on the LAN. When the thing didn't do what it was supposed to do I hosted a server on my MBP over WiFi and the players had less latency playing against my MBP (on which I was gaming myself as well) than on that crappy dedicated game server.
So, to make a long story short... It's extremely unlikely I will ever be buying a game pc (or a PC altogether) in the near future as my MBP can handle it very well...
were your friends PCs built in 1995?
While it's not impossible that they are porting the GoldSrc version of Half-Life 1 to Mac, I think it's more likely that they're only porting the Source version, aka Half-Life: Source.
Funny... A couple of times a year me and my mates have a LAN party. While they carry all there huge computer cases, monitors, speakers and more gear along in their cars or have their wives/girlfriends drop them off, I just put my MacBook Pro, headphones, mouse and a USB numpad in my bag and cycle (or Ducati) over and outperform their machines with my MacBook Pro
Perhaps you can get it looking better by buying a game PC with state of the art graphics cards in SLI, but it looks good enough for me on my MBP and it's surely fast enough. Also, I have bought state of the art graphics cards for premium prices in the past, but within 6 to 12 months these things are obsolete again. I'd rather get a little bit older GPU and still run smoothly than paying premium price... But -of course- I won't complain if Apple would provide us with better GPU's in our MBP's
A friend set up a dedicated game server hosting a couple of games on the LAN. When the thing didn't do what it was supposed to do I hosted a server on my MBP over WiFi and the players had less latency playing against my MBP (on which I was gaming myself as well) than on that crappy dedicated game server.
So, to make a long story short... It's extremely unlikely I will ever be buying a game pc (or a PC altogether) in the near future as my MBP can handle it very well...
Your friends must have crappy computers.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3659/apples-15inch-core-i5-macbook-pro-the-one-to-get/6
The benchmarks near the bottom of that page for L4D2 and WoW gave me an idea of what Mac gamers consider to be acceptable framerates. The figures aren't even high resolution, and WoW is bloody ancient.
30fps is where games tend to start to look smooth to the human eye. 60FPS is where they look "real" and this is what gamers will aim for, a steady 60FPS. At the very least they will look for a steady 30FPS. Any lower and it strains the eyes.
My PC which must have cost around £600 (and therefore would cost around $600) will run L4D2 at a solid 60+FPS, full details, 1680*1050. In fact I think it probably runs at 100+FPS but I have vsync on because above 60 I can't tell the difference. WoW only drops performance of 60+FPS in Dalaran where even people with super hot i7 computers will notice performance loss.
L4D2 is a great game, and its graphics are pretty damn good, but the Source engine is old and side by side with newer games you can notice the lower resolution textures and lack of special effects. Newer games will not run as well as L4D2 and WoW so I shudder to think of what sort of low detail slideshow you would be playing on a Mac.
Apple like to think of their products as premier computers, but in terms of games they really are entry level. Worse than entry level, since you can't put your own GPU into an iMac or Mac Mini, and the range of cards is restrictive and expensive.