Now that Steam is available for the Mac, I thought I would share my impressions as someone already familiar with the platform. The first thing you will notice when you launch Steam for Mac is that it is completely identical to the Windows version in every respect. The only visual difference is the rainbow colored buttons on the top right hand corner of the window. The fonts, colors, and windows are exactly the same, which can be expected due to the fact that much of the functionality is web based. The Mac version supposedly uses the WebKit framework in Mac OS X, which makes a lot of sense.
After launching Steam, the first thing you will see is the Store. There are currently 57 Mac titles in the Steam Store, with more to be released each Wednesday. Most people will probably head straight to the free Portal download, but there are a number of other good titles to check out as well such as Torchlight or Civilization IV. I’m really looking forward to seeing what will come out over the next few weeks. If you are already a Windows Steam user, you will notice all your Windows games will be shown in your Library. Unfortunately if there is no Mac version they won’t work. But it’s nice to have a uniform system.
Steam is pretty straight forward to use, so I’m not going to go into too much detail. I did encounter a few issues, however. First, when you install Steam it automatically adds itself to your account’s Login Items in System Preferences. So if you don’t want Steam to start up every time you login, you should go to System Preferences and remove Steam from the list. I’m pretty disappointed that there isn’t a dialog box to accept this behavior. I know that it’s customary to do things behind the user’s back in the Windows world, but on the Mac applications usually have manners and ask before they do something like that.
The second issue I encountered was when configuring the voice chat functionality. Steam automatically detects your system settings for your audio input, which is fine. But when you change the audio input settings it automatically overwrites the system settings to match what you set for Steam. Every other Mac app that I have used, such as iChat, will keep it’s own audio/video settings and not interfere with the system settings.
The first game I downloaded was Portal. Valve has done an amazing job porting the Source engine natively to the Mac. My Mac Pro has an ATI Radeon 4870 with 512MB of RAM, so I cranked the settings to the max and it ran like a dream. I have never played the Windows version of Portal, but I would bet that the performance is just as good. If the other Valve games run this smooth, I will be one happy camper in the weeks to come.
Steam for Mac is probably the single greatest thing to happen to Mac gaming. Valve is set to make a boatload of cash by opening the floodgates to the Mac user base. We have been clamoring for Triple-A titles on the Mac for years, and someone has finally stepped up to provide a quality experience rather than quick and dirty half-baked ports that are overpriced and perform horribly. I suspect that once other publishers witness the success that I expect for Steam on the Mac, they will finally see that there is tons of money to be made by providing a quality experience to Mac users and follow in Valve’s footsteps.
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Just in time too, I’m most likely getting my iMac tomorrow.
There are a couple of minor annoyances with the platform (clicks being registered to my desktop rather than the game I’m playing), but overall it’s awesome. I DL’d portal, cranked up the resolution and it didn’t skip a beat. I’m a console gamer, so getting good at the keyboard is a bit of a struggle, but portal is a great learning game.