Steam for Macintosh and Steam for PC are married via "Steam Play"

[d0b33]

Steam for Macintosh and Steam for PC are married via "Steam Play." This feature allows you free access to any Mac ports of PC games you've already purchased through the service. Games like Portal and Team Fortress 2 support this option, while several more are sure to come.

And keep in mind that this sort of cross-platform approach is something the Valve crew is seemingly taking seriously. Team Fortress 2 Mac owners like me have been playing with PC owners of the game on their very same servers during this latter end of the beta. I expect more of this in the future.

On a tangential note: the Steam cloud also keeps all of your information in-line between the two versions. Friends, profile and Library data is shared between both. I'm told that Steam for Mac, though, will have a specific Library option that displays what games you can play on the platform. It's currently not in the beta.

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Good news..

 

[ponder]

I'll be testing it in 2 days time when they launch.

 

[burn]

Bah, lame feature... Who uses Windows anyway? Not me, for one

 

[adsl3g]

I'll be testing it in 2 days time when they launch.

You managed to find a download link yet?

 

[ponder]

Double post.

 

[ponder]

You managed to find a download link yet?

In all honesty I have not even gone to the steam site yet.

Edit: Be patient, the day kinda only just began in some parts of the USA so it should be out in a few hours time or so I reckon.

 

[d0b33]

A shame I cant game on my macbook with intel graphics

 

[ponder]

http://store.steampowered.com/browse/mac

 

[BobJones]

Wasted a lot of time and energy installing and uninstalling this POS. I might try again once it's out of alpha.

Does the app do anything besides provide a browser to the website?

 

[d0b33]

Portal is free until the 24th for Mac and PC, going to get the mac version to test it out, should run fine on a macbook.

I cant get the steam to work, when i launch it it runs the updater then fails half way through saying i needs to connect to the internet, maybe the connection is too slow?

 

[BobJones]

Lemme guess, you're running a standard user account.

Steam doesn't like those, wants to be installed with an administrator account logged in. Then when you're back in your standard account, you need to grant it admin rights.

Default is to launch on startup as well.

Its a misbehaving windows app ported to Mac in a piss poor way.

Even the icon is designed for iPhone/iPad and doesn't 'fit' the dock properly. It's like the developers don't even know that the HIG exists.

 

[d0b33]

Lemme guess, you're running a standard user account.

Steam doesn't like those, wants to be installed with an administrator account logged in. Then when you're back in your standard account, you need to grant it admin rights.

Default is to launch on startup as well.

Its a misbehaving windows app ported to Mac in a piss poor way.

Even the icon is designed for iPhone/iPad and doesn't 'fit' the dock properly. It's like the developers don't even know that the HIG exists.

I am admin, it just wont download the client without failing, servers probably too busy?

 

[BobJones]

I had the downloads continually failing at 27/33Mb, till I changed to my admin account, then it miraculously disappeared. Downloaded the update first time after the change.
Steam is poorly designed and buggy as hell. Browsing is also dead slow.

Don't forget to set your download speed in Preferences or it will artificially throttle transfers.

 

[d0b33]

I had the downloads continually failing at 27/33Mb, till I changed to my admin account, then it miraculously disappeared. Downloaded the update first time after the change.
Steam is poorly designed and buggy as hell. Browsing is also dead slow.

Don't forget to set your download speed in Preferences or it will artificially throttle transfers.

lol valve better improve yea, or the stereotype of gaming on mac will be reinforced.

 

[BobJones]

Not sure about the stereotype of gaming on mac, never really had any hassle with mac games, but I'm not sure what value steam is adding?

Aspyr has been mac compatible for ages now.

 

[ponder]

Not sure about the stereotype of gaming on mac, never really had any hassle with mac games, but I'm not sure what value steam is adding?

It's a good delivery system as apposed to the other DRM infected crap and they are porting many of the games to to OSX which are currently not available.

 

[assagai]

can't get it working, fails at the 27mb mark. My account is admin, hope they sort it out soon.

 

[BobJones]

Check in your Documents folder for a Steam Contents folder. Trash it and see if the download works?

Don't even ask why application data is being stored in the documents folder.

 

[d0b33]

Lots of complaints on the steam forums too.

 

[JStrike]

can't get it working, fails at the 27mb mark. My account is admin, hope they sort it out soon.

I have this problem too. Did you find a way to fix it?