Steam on OSX
Sorry to post this here but I thought wasn't interesting enough for /links plus you lot are much more fluffy.

This says that steam (and tf2, hl2, css, etc.) are being ported to OSX.

I had a little browse on the steam forums and there's a scary amount of anti-mac sentiment there. I know they're all gamers and therefore all pretty much young idiots, but can anyone explain why people hate macs - and by extension, mac-users - so much?

As far as I can tell, the best argument so far is: "Macs are overpriced", so apart from the obvious envy angle I just don't get the hate.

Also - what do you gamers out there think? I know there's probably some 5punkers about. Personally, I think it'll mean that more bugs are ironed out due to the different build processes catching different things.




I might be a mac/linux-user.
(Shippy likes linebreaks and doesn't care what you think, Wed 10 Mar 2010, 0:23, 10 replies, latest was 16 years ago)

Personally
I like this. Hopefully will mean a lot more games will end up on the Mac in a decent port.
(Ghost Atreides enjoying incontestable health benefits on, Wed 10 Mar 2010, 0:55, Reply)

Yup
I hope it's the opening of the floodgates.

It's true that upgrading isn't really possible BUT they're not bad machines and this could also be a stepping stone towards linux gaming. So I'm rather chuffed with the news.

All the coders I know (and I'm one) use macs because they're nice, reliable, portable unix-based systems. It will be fantastic to be able to use them for leisure too.
(Shippy likes linebreaks and doesn't care what you think, Wed 10 Mar 2010, 1:02, Reply)

It's looking to be a nice setup they've got going
Porting the source engine to OpenGL is a huge step in opening up the engine to multiple platforms so I'm hopeful that a Linux build is in the pipeline someday. Add to that the fact that they are promising both Mac and Windows versions for a sigle purchase and it is win/win for the Mac community.

As for the Mac hate I have to admit that I'm one of the haters, Intellectually I can see that it is a nice platform however as much as I've tried using it long term (10.2-10.5) I just can't get on with the UI. The disconnect between an applications window(s) and its menu bar is a deal breaker for me, especially in a multihead setup. Add to that a maximise button that doesn't maximise and I want to throw their stupidly designed mouse out the fucking window.

All of that I know is my own problem, mostly stemming from growing up learning Explorer, KDE & GNOME. The thing that kills it for me though is the disdain that Mac users treat the rest of us, especially those us us who actually like Windows. Not having drank Steve's Kool-Aid can get you lynched in the wrong circles.

While I agree that the Macbook Pro is a lovely laptop, if and when I end up owning one it'll be dual booting either Ubuntu or Debian and Windows 7.

Edit: Wow I rant when I've had a few! ;)

Edit 2: Nice summary here: arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/03/valve-goes-full-steam-ahead-on-mac-os-x.ars
(bill, Wed 10 Mar 2010, 1:43, Reply)

See, I'm exactly the opposite
I can't get on with Windows. And the menu bar thing is one aspect that annoys me particularly. It's just because I've always used Macs, and while I have no problem whatsoever with people liking Windows, I try hard not to have to use it myself.

That said, I have my Mac at home set up in dual boot configuration, as it's handy for running the odd piece of software which isn't available for the Mac. But that's pretty rare, and I'm always glad to reboot into something more familiar.

I've no interest in gaming, and a lot of interest in music, so a Mac running Logic Pro suits me just fine.

Horses for courses.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Wed 10 Mar 2010, 8:22, Reply)

I don't have anything against Macs
it's the Mac users who think they're in some kind of exclusive club of superiority that really wind me up. Who gives a shit what OS you use? If you like it then what's the problem, you're the one who has to use it all the time. Mac snobbery annoys the hell out of me. And people with iphones annoy me as well because they have the damn thing glued to their hand all the time and it's impossible to get conversation out of them. When people are updating their facebook statuses from their iphone to say that they're in the pub with their mates, it usually means the mates they are with are being ignored and are probably disliking the iphone user quite a lot.
( Kitty v1.0 desperately naive, Wed 10 Mar 2010, 8:59, Reply)

I don't like macs because I like to fuck about with computers
I adore linux because it allows me to fuck about. I use windows and it lets me fuck about. When I use a mac I am restricted so much. They look smart but there's nothing that they can really do any better than a PC can do, for less. I don't hate mac users. I hate mac users that keep going on all the time about how much better a mac is. Fucking apple fanboys and girls piss me right off. They are also terrible to repair. The slot loading disc drives get jammed if anyone uses a cd made from recycled materials (they're slightly thicker) if you can't eject the discs you have to strip the entire thing to get it out, and I mean the entire thing. On a PC laptop its one or two screws and slide it out, on a macbook you need to remove the keyboard, screen, top and bottom of the base and strip out nearly all of the components to get at the disc drive. I get at least one student a week with a stuck disc. People say they are great for graphics or great for video but so is my PC and it does so much more.
( Peej, Wed 10 Mar 2010, 9:02, Reply)

You sir,
have just echoed my sentiments exactly.

Plus, I really don't like the lies that Apple users tell about it "never crashing".

I got rid of my iMac for the very reason that almost any time I tried to make it do anything remotely outside the norm (web browsing, email, the odd letter etc...), it would bloody give me that crap bomb icon. Mind you that was MacOS 9, so 10 might be better, but by then I'd given it up as a bad job; for, as you say, there's very little fucking about with Macs.

Since that episode, I now use Linux pretty much exclusively on all my machines.
(dchurch bah, Fri 12 Mar 2010, 21:41, Reply)

Lots of reasons really...
Firstly you get the irrational fanboys who hate anything that isn't their chosen platform (this goes as much for anti-PC sentiment as anti-Mac sentiment) and as such feel the need to run to the internet and proclaim their feelings loudly and at length, often regardless of the setting.

Then you get the more involved computer users who object to Macs on the basis of their closed systems, their lack of choice for certain programs, and the propitiatory software that comes bundled along with OSX (like iTunes.) They also tend to sneer at Macs because of the hardware you get inside them and the restrictions they have when it comes to upgrading them.

On top of these you get people who hate Macs (and by extension Mac users) because of the price issue, people who hate them based on the adverts and associated "smug" attitude that goes with them, people who hate them based on Apple as a company and Steve Jobs as a person, and people who will automatically hate anything that regards itself as cool or different.

Frankly, some of them have a point, but a lot of the bias is pretty much out of date now and based on half-remembered facts or old tech that hasn't been used for years. Take the one button mouse for example - a lot of the stories and related comments about Source on OSX have laughed at how Mac owners are supposed to play properly when they've only got a single mouse button, but Macs have had multi-button mice for years now (granted, they're shit for gaming because of the way they're set up, but still...)

Ultimately it comes to down to perception; Mac owners are seen by PC / Linux users as smug, egotistical style-whores who care more about the box than what's inside it, while PC / Linux users are seen by Mac owners as more socially-inept geeks who will never know the touch of the opposite sex. They're both wrong of course, PC owners are just as capable of being obsessed with how their box looks (look at Alienware PCs and the prices they command) and Mac owners are just as likely to be sexless nerds, but then most of this goes on online rather than IRL and we all know the internet is powered by stereotypes.

Personally speaking, I have a Mac because I've always used them (the first computer my Dad ever got was a Mac Plus, so UI issues and the like have never been a problem for me), and while I love doing things on a computer, I fucking hate computers. I hate wires, cables, driver problems for peripherals, defragging hard drives and everything else that you inevitably have to do as a PC owner.

The Apple advertising about how it "just works" is true, and yes, I'm well aware of the cost to control and tinkering this brings, but it's worth it for me. In the last four years, my flatmate has had to replace damn near everything in his PC because of power surges, over heating and other problems, whereas I've replaced the disc drive and upgraded the RAM. The other, less noticed thing here is that while my Mac cost considerably more to buy in the first place, looking at the comparative costs over time, they're about even...
(Frank., Wed 10 Mar 2010, 14:17, Reply)

P.S.
As for Steam, Source and gaming on Macs in general, I've been using Bootcamp and a Windows partition for the last four years (mainly for Source games) so I'm ecstatic about the news. Not only do we get native ports of some of the best games of all time, we also get continued support from one of the best games companies of all time. If it was anyone but Valve I'd still be happy, but the amount of work and innovation that Valve put into gaming as a whole means that this is the best possible outcome for us. The extra boost it'll give to OpenGL and games on Linux is good news too.

As for specifics about Source games / games on Macs, I haven't had any problems. TF2, L4D/2 and HL all work well, and while they may not be as pretty as on a dedicated gaming rig, they're still nice enough to look at and more importantly run well.

It's worth nothing that there are plenty of other (non Valve) games with Mac versions are already available on Steam, so there should be a nice range come launch: savygamer.co.uk/2010/03/03/here-is-a-list-of-games-currently-on-steam-that-already-have-a-native-mac-port-in-existence/
(Frank., Wed 10 Mar 2010, 14:27, Reply)

I like you
great link. :)
(Shippy likes linebreaks and doesn't care what you think, Fri 12 Mar 2010, 12:13, Reply)