

Mac SteamPowered Client (dmg) - matrixownsyou
http://store.steampowered.com/public/client/steam.dmg

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frou_dh
I'll kick off the nit-picking ;-)

It's got a fake Mac interface (doesn't respect the Graphite appearance
preference) and normal copy and paste (⌘C ⌘V) don't work in some/all of the
text fields.

~~~
callahad
It also causes my Macbook Pro to swap over to discrete graphics from the
integrated chip, and sets itself to automatically launch on startup.
Significantly reducing the battery life of new macs, by default.

Still, this is a first release, and the automatic graphics switching is still
quite new. I trust that the UI / UX issues will be resolved in due course.

Edit: Upon rebooting my Mac, the Steam client did _not_ trigger an integrated
to discrete switch. However, according to gfxCardStatus, the "steam" process
_was_ keeping the discrete card engaged prior to the reboot.

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OrangeGuutan
Isn't the switching over to discrete graphics a good thing? Who plays games on
their computer "on-the-go?" Wouldn't you want the better performance?

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danudey
I'm assuming the parent means that just running the steam _client_ switches
over to discrete graphics, which would severely impact battery life for no
real performance gain.

Also, some games play fine on the integrated graphics, so switching over to
discrete isn't necessarily something you always want.

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fletchowns
Everybody should go download Braid until they release some more games. It is
one of the best games you will ever play! The music is amazing, the artwork is
fantastic, and it will melt your mind trying to beat it.

~~~
danudey
I can't vote this up enough. If you want a game that makes you think, that has
an interesting story (which also makes you think), and which then makes you
think about both of those in the context of time not necessarily being a
linear forward progression, get Braid.

Put another way, if you've ever wanted a platformer where you had to think
'Once I flip this switch, I have five seconds to have been over there', Braid
is your game.

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tibbon
Unfortunately it doesn't support case-sensitive drives. I thought (for some
stupid reason) since it's a *nix underpinning that it would be best to have
case sensitivity last time I formatted.

It seems that someone didn't write their paths in a flexible way (windows-
like) and you have to reinstall your entire machine to run this.

Steam isn't the only one effected however. The Starcraft 2 beta and World of
Warcraft also don't support case sensitive volumes.

Due to this I'm taking most of my evening and using Carbon Copy Cloner to dupe
the drive and restore it as a case insensitive drive. I wish someone could
have just done a .to_lower function at the end of their path strings.

~~~
danudey
Unfortunately it doesn't say this anywhere so lots of UNIX/Linux converts
don't know, but case-sensitive boot partitions are a terrible idea. As I'm
sure you've found out, there are a great deal of large applications that don't
support case-sensitivity (including, I think, Photoshop).

Let this be a warning to anyone who considers it in the future: don't. You can
use case-sensitivity on non-boot volumes (e.g. external drives) if you're
concerned about case issues (e.g. moving data from another case-sensitive file
system).

Also, since the filesystem is case-insensitive (but case-preserving) anyway,
you can add this to your ~/.inputrc to have readline completion (e.g. in Bash)
ignore case:

    
    
      set completion-ignore-case on
    

Makes life much easier.

~~~
tibbon
Why is this done so well and respected in *nix land, but in Mac-world no
programmer takes it into account? Seems to be a massive oversight and easily
fixed by companies like Valve, Adobe and Blizzard. Less than 10 lines of code
could fix this problem.

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amock
It takes more than a few lines of code to make sure everything works. You now
have to test on both kinds of filesystems which doubles the amount of testing
you have to do.

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AgentIcarus
I didn't realise the link in the topic would cause a download (I opened it
from my RSS reader and was surprised to see a blank tab!). Would you consider
adding a [DMG] or similar to the title?

~~~
calvinf
Agree. Linking to executables/installers is probably a bad habit - why not
link to the download page itself so people can read more about the app?

~~~
frou_dh
People were so desperate that they (found?) and passed around the DMG link
before it was featured on the website.

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sirn
Tried the Steam client on my Mac, Steam.app itself is a bit buggy and quite a
resource consuming. The UI feels sluggish even on my i7 iMac, too. For the
game itself, Portal works nicely at native resolution at max settings with
lower framerate than Windows equivalent on the same machine. I found it
surprising that exposé, dashboard, etc. works even in-game.

While Magic Mouse works nicely with Portal, I'd rather not to try it on Team
Fortress 2 when it's released as it cannot handle simultaneous left/right
click.

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medecau
If you have a case-sensitive filesystem don't bother downloading.

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amock
Does it just not work or does it detect that you have a case sensitive file
system and not install? Most of Blizzards games work fine on a case-sensitive
file system but the installers don't so you have to install on a different
machine and then copy the files over. I guess they don't want to have more
configurations to test, but it's annoying that they go out of their way to
make it not work.

~~~
tibbon
Installer doesn't work and it wants things in your /library directory to be
case insensitive as well. This just seems like poor/lazy programming that
isn't aware of how a Mac (can) work. Seems like a quick patch, but Blizzard
didn't do it for WoW or SC2 beta and its been a known issue for some time.

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amock
I was able to make Steam work by putting it on a disk image with a case
insensitive file system and symlinking all of the directories it wanted to
directories on that image.

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veeti
Telegraph is also reporting that a "Linux client will be released in the
coming months": [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/7715209/Steam-
fo...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/7715209/Steam-for-Mac-goes-
live.html)

~~~
Legion
I hope they're right.

One of the cool things Steam does is package old DOS games into an individual
preconfigured DOSBox environment.

My dream has been for Steam to do the same thing for Win32 games and Wine.
Install the game on Steam, click to launch it, and it runs in Wine with all
the tweaks needed to run that specific game already done.

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teilo
World of Goo works! Yeah! This is a seductively simple 2D game that is a lot
of fun.

~~~
cubicle67
World of Goo worked fine on the Mac pre-Steam :)

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eswat
Out of the 102 games I own, only 5 of them can be installed on Mac so far.

Good enough for me though. Installing Torchlight, but Steam Cloud didn't
transfer my PC characters over.

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TrevorBramble
Disappointing to hear that Steam Cloud data isn't currently (won't be?)
portable across all supported platforms.

Doesn't currently affect me as I use Steam games via Wine or on Windows
directly, but I'm rather excited about the possibility of a native Linux
implementation so I'm watching the Steam for Mac news closely.

~~~
AgentIcarus
From <http://store.steampowered.com/news/3820/> : Win32 side support for Steam
Play / Steam Cloud integration with upcoming Mac titles

It's coming to Mac, and I imagine that'll come to Linux in time too.

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mishmash
Dear $deity yes thank you Valve. :)

edit: No TF2 makes me cry.

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someone_here
Maybe there are right-click issues on the mac? Last I heard you can't click
both right and left buttons (it simulates a middle click)

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amock
The Mighty Mouse has issues with clicking both buttons at the same time since
there is only one button to push.

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abossy
Are there plans (rumored or confirmed) to release the Half-Life series on the
Mac?

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itg
yes, valve is bringing all their games to the mac

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matrixownsyou
more games released: <http://store.steampowered.com/browse/mac>

