Today, as promised, Steam was released for Mac OS X. I downloaded it as soon as I could, and I’ve been using it since. My first observation: It’s pretty optimized for the system. For me, it’s taking up 68.1MBs of RAM, while Chrome takes up 97.2MBs. Sure, it takes up a bit more RAM than Tweetie or VLC, but it takes up less memory than I expected.
Once I got into the meat of the application, I realized this is exactly what we’ve been waiting for. It’s… Well, it’s Steam. I instantly logged into my account and noticed that I can’t yet download any of my games other than Portal. (I also have other Source-based games, such as Counter-Strike: Source, all of Half-Life 2, and Team Fortress 2, among others.) Bit of a bummer, but I’m happy to get something running.
Looking into the store, there is a Mac category with a good bit of great games (such as Torchlight and Braid) available for purchase. It’s nice to see they’ve already set this all up.
Speaking of great games, Portal runs pretty well. There are some performance glitches (occasional framerate issues as well as a really long opening loading time) that make me think that this is truly still in beta, but all in all it’s not that bad (and it would probably run better if I brought down the graphic preferences, but I don’t feel like loading up the game just to do that. Again, the loading time is pretty horrendous).
Oh, almost forgot to mention. If you don’t already own Portal, you can get it for free Mac or PC until May 24th. Free. For keepsies. If you’ve never tried Portal, you should… Especially now that it’s free. It’s easily one of the most inventive and amazing games I’ve ever played (and is actually my favourite game of all time, tied with Diablo II). More information about the “Portal = free” stuff here.
Some people are a bit irked that there’s not a platform-specific UI. Personally, I don’t mind. I think the Steam UI is brilliant, regardless of what OS you’re running it on. Looks great, functions well, and… Lets us play videogames. So deal with it.
Related posts:
- Half-Life 2 for Mac Released
- Starcraft 2 Released To Mac User Animosity
- Steam for Mac Private Beta Leaked
- Mac Gaming Gaining Traction
- What Steam’s Hardware & Software Survey Tells Us
1 Response
> There are some performance glitches (occasional framerate issues as well as a really long opening loading time) that make me think that this is truly still in beta, but all in all it’s not that bad (and it would probably run better if I brought down the graphic preferences, but I don’t feel like loading up the game just to do that. Again, the loading time is pretty horrendous). Experienced the same issues here… And when I changed the graphical preferences and hit "apply", it sort of freaked out on me, and the image on the screen kept flipping upside-down and back. (When I opened the Steam thing with Shift+Tab, it did not do the flipping thing, but there was a slight reflection of the contents of the screen, but upside-down (and in the background – behind the right-side-up stuff). When I typed in chat, I saw that it was reflected in the background. Not sure what that was about.) Then I had to quit and restart. Besides that, when I hit OK instead of Apply, it seemed to be fine. And I had the same issues with long initial loading time and framerate slowdown. Reducing the graphics made it run at a reasonable speed, but even with close to default settings, it looked pretty weird (but still semi-normal and playable). But hey, it’s free, and it just came out for Mac. We’ll see.
Posted on May 13th, 2010 at 4:01 am
Add A Comment