Steam for Linux Confirmed; Now Live for Mac OSX

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[citation][nom]randomizer[/nom]That has advantages. You're far less likely to have driver bugs if you install drivers that have been rigorously tested than if you install the latest and greatest beta from NVIDIA.[/citation]
Not really true. For example the overheat issue on the Nvidia drivers a few weeks back. Those went through beta testing, but still came out with the cooling issue in the final release.

However, there is a flip side to your logic. If there is a bug in the current certified driver, how long will you have to wait until you get a fix for said driver? Most people would stay with the current one regardless of the bug because it improved something from the previous driver, but some others may rollback.

You also have the case of Creative and their drivers with the X-Fi on Vista/7. Users with those sound cards have to pull 3rd party drivers to make their sound cards work properly on those OSs. It has been a few years and Creative themselves still have not fixed that issue.

When Apple certifies a driver, it is not so much as whether it is too buggy or not. It is whether Apple thinks the driver should be used. Just think of the OSX updates that come along, and they drop support on older hardware. Apple dropped support on the Power PC CPUs when the Leopard series came out, and sadly this is what happens with closed systems. Programmers were smart enough to make a 3rd party configuration to allow such support for legacy hardware on the newer OSX versions. Quite frankly, not a lot of people want to give up the system that they have just to have the latest OS. Linux/Windows systems do not drop support on legacy hardware like that. If the manufacturer does drop support, you can easily find a 3rd party driver with no problem.
 
[citation][nom]bochica[/nom]Not really true. For example the overheat issue on the Nvidia drivers a few weeks back. Those went through beta testing, but still came out with the cooling issue in the final release.[/citation]
I only used the betas as an example, of course final release drivers have bugs as well. We all know how much testing a driver needs to go through to pas WHQL. It just needs to install. WHQL is a cash cow for MS, nothing more.

[citation][nom]bochica[/nom]When Apple certifies a driver, it is not so much as whether it is too buggy or not. It is whether Apple thinks the driver should be used.[/citation]

Well in keeping with Apple's "it just works" dogma, I would expect a good amount of testing. After all, there's only a limited range of hardware to test on, and if it fails on any one configuration that's ALOT of people with issues. Of course I can't say for certain that they do anything more than MS do when certifying drivers.
 
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