Tell me I'm not the only happy Mac user

[TheDopp]

After the Steam UI update some folks on the steam forums found OSX specific images and such hinting at a release of Steam for the Mac platform. News today all but confirms that hint:
http://www.macworld.com/article/1468...valve_mac.html
and
http://kotaku.com/5484948/valve-teas...-not-so-subtly

And based on the images (which isn't the best idea), here's to hoping they're actually implementing a wrapper or straight porting over the Source games.

[Snarf]

obligatoryantimac.jpg

[OmegaZero_Alpha]

Macs can't play games for shit.

Their software makes them inherently weaker than PCs, and programs actually run better on macs when you install windows 7 anyway, and then the fact that their drivers are all written for professional use compounds this problem.

I would be lucky to get 20FPS in tf2 on similar hardware on a Macintosh platform.

[Vaft]

There was an interesting part in the Gizmodo article about the same thing.

"PC gaming isn't dying, apparently, it's moving to Macs."

Thought that was really entertaining.

[TheDopp]

Macs can't play games for shit.

Their software makes them inherently weaker than PCs, and programs actually run better on macs when you install windows 7 anyway, and then the fact that their drivers are all written for professional use compounds this problem.

I would be lucky to get 20FPS in tf2 on similar hardware on a Macintosh platform.

My 2-year-old iMac gets ~50fps on high settings 1920x1200 when I boot to XP. Just updated my Parallels VM and it gets ~30-40fps at the same res with medium settings. One is left to assume that if Valve either ports the game or uses Cider as a wrapper it won't hit performance nearly as much as you're suggesting. It's true, because programmers are lazy, it won't get the same FPS rates as Windows but it's not going to be nearly as bad as you're making it out to be.

[glouch]

I think the problem is that it will get a lot of people's hopes up, who just assume that their games will run just as well...

[OmegaZero_Alpha]

Macs can't play games for shit.

Their software makes them inherently weaker than PCs, and programs actually run better on macs when you install windows 7 anyway, and then the fact that their drivers are all written for professional use compounds this problem.

I would be lucky to get 20FPS in tf2 on similar hardware on a Macintosh platform.

My 2-year-old iMac gets ~50fps on high settings 1920x1200 when I boot to XP. Just updated my Parallels VM and it gets ~30-40fps at the same res with medium settings. One is left to assume that if Valve either ports the game or uses Cider as a wrapper it won't hit performance nearly as much as you're suggesting. It's true, because programmers are lazy, it won't get the same FPS rates as Windows but it's not going to be nearly as bad as you're making it out to be.

I would like to first state that running something in a virtual machine is in no way emulating a port. All of the driver issues in macs are eliminated by running it in a virtual machine because of the fact that you are using windows drivers at that point, and you are effectively using DirectX.

Macintosh HAS no directX. Microsoft will never allow that to happen. The only option for them is to use OpenGL, which sucks shit for high-end (post-2006) gaming at this point in time.

Second, Cider wouldn't solve the problems for non-intel macs, which is REALLY the only issue here. Why would they waste all of this effort to port something just to save people the five to ten minutes rebooting into windows?

Cider also can't handle middleware. So I hope you can enjoy playing Half Life 2 without physics.

[TheDopp]

I would like to first state that running something in a virtual machine is in no way emulating a port. All of the driver issues in macs are eliminated by running it in a virtual machine because of the fact that you are using windows drivers at that point, and you are effectively using DirectX.

Macintosh HAS no directX. Microsoft will never allow that to happen. The only option for them is to use OpenGL, which sucks shit for high-end (post-2006) gaming at this point in time.

Second, Cider wouldn't solve the problems for non-intel macs, which is REALLY the only issue here. Why would they waste all of this effort to port something just to save people the five to ten minutes rebooting into windows?

Cider also can't handle middleware. So I hope you can enjoy playing Half Life 2 without physics.

Emulation isn't part of the discussion - just as new games to the Mac platform are released as Intel only, there's no reason to think Valve would do any different if releasing theirs (though I don't doubt they'd release older Mac ports from other developers that work for the old platform as well as new). So for the sake of discussion running TF2 on XP in Parallels is the extreme when talking overhead for running the game in OSX via a virtualization wrapper (CrossOver or Cider - the same tech used in WINE).

And Cider doesn't 'handle' middleware, true, because it doesn't need to; the example you used isn't because it's a technology that's missing, it's licensing. Furthering the example, Valve would (probably) have to get a new license from Havok for Half-Life 2 for releases on Macs. That's money and it's really in Valve's court if they want to front the money for a (much) smaller market of gamers.

To the bit about them saving people 5-10 minutes to reboot: My XP partition is only used to play games. I don't have a chat client, IRC client, etc installed. I could install those programs, but I could also just forget I have OSX and do everything in Windows. Having a Steam client native on OSX lets me use the OS I want to use, and gives me the option of Gaming in it as well (or idling in TF2 and getting actual work done while that happens), and for Valve that means I spend more money on games since it's no longer an inconvenience to play. And that's not even taking into consideration the hordes of social/casual gamers that would have an app store to find games they couldn't otherwise get as they don't even know what bootcamp is (e.g. my parents).

tl;dr - Hooray Steam on macs

[OmegaZero_Alpha]

Emulation isn't part of the discussion - just as new games to the Mac platform are released as Intel only, there's no reason to think Valve would do any different if releasing theirs (though I don't doubt they'd release older Mac ports from other developers that work for the old platform as well as new). So for the sake of discussion running TF2 on XP in Parallels is the extreme when talking overhead for running the game in OSX via a virtualization wrapper (CrossOver or Cider - the same tech used in WINE).

You completely ignired the point I was making. Your display of performance was based solely on emulation. That and running the game in a virtualized environment would be bulky and inefficient (or have you forgotten about the PC port of Grand Theft Auto 4?)

And Cider doesn't 'handle' middleware, true, because it doesn't need to; the example you used isn't because it's a technology that's missing, it's licensing. Furthering the example, Valve would (probably) have to get a new license from Havok for Half-Life 2 for releases on Macs. That's money and it's really in Valve's court if they want to front the money for a (much) smaller market of gamers.

There is no way that valve would make enough money to cover the money cost to renew a contract with THROUGH a third party. I could see them porting new games, but making older games (even TF2 isn't making much money) would be a financial disaster.

To the bit about them saving people 5-10 minutes to reboot: My XP partition is only used to play games. I don't have a chat client, IRC client, etc installed. I could install those programs, but I could also just forget I have OSX and do everything in Windows. Having a Steam client native on OSX lets me use the OS I want to use, and gives me the option of Gaming in it as well (or idling in TF2 and getting actual work done while that happens), and for Valve that means I spend more money on games since it's no longer an inconvenience to play. And that's not even taking into consideration the hordes of social/casual gamers that would have an app store to find games they couldn't otherwise get as they don't even know what bootcamp is (e.g. my parents).

It sounds like the only inconvenience is coming from your own inability to use the one operating system that does everything that you need it to. Everybody I know has no problem with either running bootcamp when they want to play games or just not using a mac (which is what about 92% of all computer users chose to do)

[TheDopp]

Emulation isn't part of the discussion - just as new games to the Mac platform are released as Intel only, there's no reason to think Valve would do any different if releasing theirs (though I don't doubt they'd release older Mac ports from other developers that work for the old platform as well as new). So for the sake of discussion running TF2 on XP in Parallels is the extreme when talking overhead for running the game in OSX via a virtualization wrapper (CrossOver or Cider - the same tech used in WINE).

You completely ignired the point I was making. Your display of performance was based solely on emulation. That and running the game in a virtualized environment would be bulky and inefficient (or have you forgotten about the PC port of Grand Theft Auto 4?)

Yes I ignored your point because it was inaccurate as my display of performance was based on Virtualization, not emulation.
--Parallels is Virtualization software as are Cider, CrossOver and WINE. Virtual PC is an Emulator that emulates x86 hardware. Emulating hardware has a lot more overhead than Virtualization. With the move to the Intel platform you don't need emulation on macs to run Windows software.
--Current game publishers ignore old Apple hardware (and with the latest OS release, Apple has rung the death knell on that hardware) and focus entirely on the Intel based macs. They release either wrapped games (where very little extra work is required) or ported games (rewriting the graphics portion to use OpenGL). Games for the PowerPC era macs were all ported with most of the game re-written for the platform. Wrapping was not possible without a severe performance hit since the hardware had to be emulated.
--I never played GTA on PC specifically because it's a console game and ports (at least prior to Microsoft's framework they released with the 360, which would be a better example in this case) generally fail since you're moving from a specific hardware platform to a non-specific hardware platform (and based on what google has told me, the primary issues were XP SP1 related, and ATI related).

And Cider doesn't 'handle' middleware, true, because it doesn't need to; the example you used isn't because it's a technology that's missing, it's licensing. Furthering the example, Valve would (probably) have to get a new license from Havok for Half-Life 2 for releases on Macs. That's money and it's really in Valve's court if they want to front the money for a (much) smaller market of gamers.

There is no way that valve would make enough money to cover the money cost to renew a contract with THROUGH a third party. I could see them porting new games, but making older games (even TF2 isn't making much money) would be a financial disaster.

We'll have to wait for the announcement to see if they are willing to put the cash down. Or if Havok caved in and lowered the license fee since it's a smaller market. Or, if for some silly reason, Apple has reversed its position in gaming and is partnering with Valve (and thus willing to subsidize costs or drop some cash as an investment). Or some other reason. This is the only stumbling block in getting Valve (and other) games on the mac - and that's the part I'm crossing my fingers on.

To the bit about them saving people 5-10 minutes to reboot: My XP partition is only used to play games. I don't have a chat client, IRC client, etc installed. I could install those programs, but I could also just forget I have OSX and do everything in Windows. Having a Steam client native on OSX lets me use the OS I want to use, and gives me the option of Gaming in it as well (or idling in TF2 and getting actual work done while that happens), and for Valve that means I spend more money on games since it's no longer an inconvenience to play. And that's not even taking into consideration the hordes of social/casual gamers that would have an app store to find games they couldn't otherwise get as they don't even know what bootcamp is (e.g. my parents).

It sounds like the only inconvenience is coming from your own inability to use the one operating system that does everything that you need it to. Everybody I know has no problem with either running bootcamp when they want to play games or just not using a mac (which is what about 92% of all computer users chose to do)

Windows doesn't do everything I need it to. It's why I use OSX. I've forced my parents, and others, onto OSX because Windows didn't do what they needed either (for different reasons than mine). That 9% (last report I read on it, with Linux/etc comprising 2%) of the market is still a large chunk of people. And besides Direct2Drive there's no one else in the mac game marketplace market. Even if it means Bejewelled and Peggle are your top sellers on mac steam that's still cash in hand. And for non-technical mac users, that's an easy way to get games.