Steam for Mac: First Impressions, Windows Is Faster

[TEAMSWITCHER]

I was able to see through the portals just fine. And yes Mac hardware is superior to PC hardware. In build quality and design. Portal is just a crappy port. Native Mac OS X games like WOW, are just as fast as the PC.

 

[mindless728]

I was able to see through the portals just fine. And yes Mac hardware is superior to PC hardware. In build quality and design. Portal is just a crappy port. Native Mac OS X games like WOW, are just as fast as the PC.

no, actually its the same hardware now, and it is not superior, the best GPU you can get for gaming is either the GTX285 or 4870 where as on the PC you can get anything (being able to upgrade is nice)

 

[pollom]

Mac users should install a real operative system (windows 7)

 

[lunarx3dfx]

I would like to say that I have been a PC user for years, and my gaming has been and always will be a pc, but I have been using mac laptops because of their build quality since 2006. That being said however, I will be trading in my MacBook for an Alienware M11x here very soon, because I am tired of paying $1400 for a laptop that isn't as capable. I like small, portable, and light for a laptop, I think anything over 15.6" is utterly stupid and is no longer a laptop. The Mac laptops are great processor wise, but they are always lagging behind visually.

Now, on the Youtube video posted earlier about the guy "reviewing" Steam for Mac, he's obviously not a power user, he is a straight Mac user for starters, and apparently he doesn't understand the concept of beta software. Oh no, it crashed your computer. Oh no, your video card isn't supported, not my problem you bought an iMac with an IGP. Sounds like a personal problem but don't blame steam. Steam is fantastic for so many reasons. Mainly for me it is Steam Cloud. I format and reinstall Windows quite frequently, and not having to worry about backing up most of my save game files is very convenient. That guy was a moron.

Bottom line is, who cares what people spend their money on? Granted, at this point with the release of Windows 7 I can't recommend a mac to people like I used to, hell even Apple has stopped their trash talking campaign, but Macs are capable of everything a pc is. Mac OS X is in my opinion one of the best OS' ever made on a usability standpoint. I love the gestures it has, that netbooks don't, like the 4 finger swipe down to activate expose, it's window management is still far superior to Windows, multiple desktops, yes, linux has had it for years, but this is Mac versus Windows. At this point MS should have it built in. It's really ridiculous that they don't. But the king of PC games is still Windows. DX is still far superior to OpenGL, and while I used to love OpenGL, they just haven't updated it like they should have over the years. So to all the Mac users out there, welcome to the Steam party, but sucks that you have to suffer with lousy framerates. To all the elitist PC users out there, you sound like the mac users do.

Glide gaming FTW though. God I miss 3dfx.

 

[oncall]

"Bottom line is, who cares what people spend their money on?"

Exactly. I know all the power users here are crowing about Win 7 doing better, well of course it did, no surprise at all. The real deal is now all these games will work on the Apple platform, sure maybe not as well but still they will work. And now people can switch back and forth between platforms and not need to worry about giving up or having to repurchase their games.

 

[edilee]

[citation][nom]Doommaker[/nom]You pay an extra $500-600 for that shiny Apple logo.[/citation]
And don't forget that extra $$ goes towards the cost of product placement in almost every single movie and show on television. These placements would make you think that everyone uses Macs but I find it odd I actually only know ONE(1) person that does lol. Macs should actually be priced about $400+ less than a PC if they were priced according to performance.

 

[mindless728]

And now people can switch back and forth between platforms and not need to worry about giving up or having to repurchase their games.

well that's not entirely true, i wouldn't switch to a mac since only valve and some small companies ported there games, most of the games on steam will still be windows only

 

[Darkerson]

[citation][nom]eddieroolz[/nom]Protip to all Mac users: Install Windows 7 and play games faster, better and easier.[/citation]
While I'm sure that will help a little, you're still stuck with under powered hardware...

[citation][nom]NoWaisteTime[/nom]PC for game Mac for real work[/citation]
Let me fix that for you. PC for gaming. PC for work. Mac for looks.

 

[randomizer]

[citation][nom]back_by_demand[/nom]Steve Jobs now needs to go cap in hand to Microsoft, swallow his pride, beat down that MONUMENTAL ego and ask, please, sir, if it's not too much trouble, can they have DirectX for OSX.[/citation]
I would prefer it if they didn't. That will only further cement proprietary APIs as the way of the future. OpenGL simply needs to be taken out of the hands of "professionals" and put into the hands of game developers, even if this makes somebody angry such that they need to make the two separate forks.

DirectX has always been designed to lock people to a specific platform, and as such I don't think it will be available on OSX in the foreseeable future (gamers are an almost exclusive market for MS). But even if it was, it's still designed to lock you in. You can't lock people to a platform with OpenGL because anyone can implement the API. Now if DirectX runtimes were opened up to everyone I wouldn't have an issue with it, but MS are slow to open their standards. Even .NET is only partially open.

 

[Guest]

Comparing a C2D to a i7 is not a fair comparasion. Cmparing a “Nvidia GeForce 9400M” to a “ATI Radeon HD 4890″ is not a fair comparison. Etc etc you get my point. You compared a Mac laptop to a good desktop hackintosh. Try again when you have an i7 imac to compare to your hackintosh. At least that would a more fair comparison. At the moment you are comparing apples and oranges. Not the same thing. Of cause a Laptop would have less fps them a desktop. Come back when when you compare desktop to desktop. Cause at this moment this article and comparison is rather FAIL!

 

[randomizer]

[citation][nom]the8thark[/nom]Cause at this moment this article and comparison is rather FAIL![/citation]
Not really. The Hackintosh had both OSX and Win 7 on it. That's a completely fair comparison. It's only unfair to compare the laptop and the Hackintosh except on a bang for buck basis.

 

[nebun]

games installed on Apple OS will never play games as good as the games installed on Windows OS. OS X has never been and will never been for games

 

[Jarmo]

[citation][nom]OrderChaos[/nom](speaking of which, I've always wondered what the apple faithful do with their old computers...anyone care to enlighten me?) [/citation]

There's a thriving market for second hand macs. Nothing goes unsold and the prices are surprisingly high.
http://www.mac2sell.net/

Actually, in the lower end, the resale value balances out the usually higher initial cost of mac ownership.

 

[sire_angelus]

they compared 2 os on the same machine... twice.

 

[randomizer]

[citation][nom]Jarmo[/nom]There's a thriving market for second hand macs. Nothing goes unsold and the prices are surprisingly high.http://www.mac2sell.net/Actually, in the lower end, the resale value balances out the usually higher initial cost of mac ownership.[/citation]
This is something most people don't consider. A PC is worthless after 2 years, whereas Macs keep a very high resale value in comparison. Whether they are worth that resale value is irrelevant, it exists.

 

[TEAMSWITCHER]

[citation][nom]mindless728[/nom]no, actually its the same hardware now, and it is not superior, the best GPU you can get for gaming is either the GTX285 or 4870 where as on the PC you can get anything (being able to upgrade is nice)[/citation]

I'm gonna say this one last time, slowly for you. PORTAL is a short DirectX game that Valve ported to the Macintosh - POORLY. This is a bad reflection of on VALVE, not Apple. PC fan boys should not hold this crappy attempt at Macintosh programming up as any indication of the overall quality of the platform. There are companies with a long track record of providing native Mac titles, ID and Blizzard are the two best, and their titles run with the same performance characteristics on Macintosh hardware

I can tell you right now, as a developer of professional applications on both Windows and Macintosh, the Mac is every bit as good as the PC, and better in some cases. Yes PC's have a larger range of video card choices, but that doesn't make my life as a developer any easier. While your PC may be fast, there are a large percentage of Atom, Celeron, Turion, and even Pentium Dual-Core Windows machines that do not exist in the Macintosh world. Not to mention a metric shit ton of Intel integrated graphic machines, which Apple stopped shipping (exclusively) two years ago.

 

[Guest]

^
oh? And newer MBPs didn't have Intel GPUs with Nvidia cards?

 

[Regulas]

[citation][nom]pollom[/nom]Mac users should install a real operative system (windows 7)[/citation]
Did I just not post on page 3 that this site is full of MS trolls who are playing in their mom's basement, probably on a Dell they got for their birthday.

 

[mindless728]

I'm gonna say this one last time, slowly for you. PORTAL is a short DirectX game that Valve ported to the Macintosh - POORLY. This is a bad reflection of on VALVE, not Apple. PC fan boys should not hold this crappy attempt at Macintosh programming up as any indication of the overall quality of the platform. There are companies with a long track record of providing native Mac titles, ID and Blizzard are the two best, and their titles run with the same performance characteristics on Macintosh hardware

I can tell you right now, as a developer of professional applications on both Windows and Macintosh, the Mac is every bit as good as the PC, and better in some cases. Yes PC's have a larger range of video card choices, but that doesn't make my life as a developer any easier. While your PC may be fast, there are a large percentage of Atom, Celeron, Turion, and even Pentium Dual-Core Windows machines that do not exist in the Macintosh world. Not to mention a metric *** ton of Intel integrated graphic machines, which Apple stopped shipping (exclusively) two years ago.

i am not doubting that the port can get a lot more performance from the MAC machines in due time though i wouldn't say this reflects poorly on apple since i would be happy they are making available their games for MAC (and soon linux ), i was just saying the difference between a MAC and PC is negligible now, and the fact that you can't upgrade the GPU kind of sucks (and why a PC is better IMO), and makes the system not nearly as viable of a gaming machine

having a larger range doesn't make it easier, in fact it makes it harder (ie you have to code for the least performance hardware and allow it to scale to much higher performance machines, i am a *NIX/Windows Dev)

This is something most people don't consider. A PC is worthless after 2 years, whereas Macs keep a very high resale value in comparison. Whether they are worth that resale value is irrelevant, it exists.

yes if you buy a a Dell/HP/Sony or any of the other name brands in PC's, but if you are an enthusiast you can usually get quite a bit of money back (not nearly as much as a MAC), though this has to do with the MACS being expensive, people wanting them and buying them used and with crappy PC's being cheap (ie $400 range).

 

[VWXYZ]

I just came to think of it. Macs seem to run better than PCs because the OS is optimized for the hardware AND, you don't really do anything heavy on a mac (maybe except some creative work, but creative proffesionnals with macs are just that, pros, and they know editing is hard on the CPU)

Now with games on the mac, people are gonna have some seriously bad experiences on their macs :O Portal isn't the most demanding game, but if something just at tiny bit heavier lands on the mac, all of the 13"'ers are gonna ask what the hell happened to their performance.

This is really interested! And I actually think Apple is sitting somewhere cursing steam to some hell for bringing this kind of requirements to the Mac.

 

[tlmck]

I'll wait for the Linux version.

 

[Lamiel]

[citation][nom]theribster500[/nom]for all you pc fanboys out there, first off, this is the first version of steam + ports of these games for the first time for a completely different OS. It takes time for things to become perfected, and even still, it isn't perfected then. Seriously, how long has steam been on windows for, compared to this release of steam for os x[/citation]
Well that's not the point... The point is that Macs are bad and PC's are good!

 

[Lamiel]

[citation][nom]randomizer[/nom]This is something most people don't consider. A PC is worthless after 2 years, whereas Macs keep a very high resale value in comparison. Whether they are worth that resale value is irrelevant, it exists.[/citation]
Okay, so far I've been making blatant PC fanboy comments on this thread, but I'll be serious this time. The idea that PC's are worthless after two years is just absurd. PC's hold their value far longer than Macs because they are open platforms that can be upgraded, on both software and hardware fronts, to remain relevant and useful long after the components in your Mac start to choke. Any "resale" value is purely subjective and based entirely on erroneous and flawed perceptions fostered by Justin Long's appeal to the ignorant college students who thing the "I'm a Mac" commercials actually mean something. Okay... I guess I didn't manage to keep it ENTIRELY serious, but my point still stands. Macs are for the ignorant and PC's are for those who actually want to get the most for their money.

 

[Guest]

I am wondering if and when the Toms Hardware Noobs use a current mac to get a realistic comparison.
Nothing to see here .. move along.

 

[brian97]

[citation][nom]randomizer[/nom]This is something most people don't consider. A PC is worthless after 2 years, whereas Macs keep a very high resale value in comparison. Whether they are worth that resale value is irrelevant, it exists.[/citation]

I guess this statement would be true if you didn't take care of your PC or didn't spend a few minutes upgrading it. It's very easy and cheap to do major upgrades to your PC that will extend its life considerably, increase its performance to handle the latest software/games and increase its value. Seems like the only mac system that has easy upgrading is the mac pro (which my brother has) but the base price on that is $2,500 which increases rapidly once you start upgrading it.

It would be nice if mac made their OS more accessible without having to purchase an apple approved machine that severely limits your upgrade capabilities. This is unless you spend a very large amount of money on their premier machine.