Steam for Mac

[Steve]

Steam for Mac is now available with a free game - Portal until the 24th May

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

PS what ever Portal is? I got lost after Monkey Island

[vitriol]

It's a first person puzzle game and it is brilliant.  As it is free, if you own a mac and have a system capable of running it, then you owe it to yourself to give it a try.

[Technical Ben]

It's similar to the normal first person shooters. Just without shooting. Can get very disorientating. But if other games make it to mac as well, it could be great. As there are many mini game and all sorts for everyone if you look hard enough. (Must avoid maxing out my credit card with Bookworm Adventures and Cooking Dash.  )

[Gary]

I must admit I have never got into playing games on Windows or my Mac, I just play games on my PS3.

[Niall]

I downloaded Portal yesterday. My connection went all weird when I was downloading it and Steam told me I was downloading at 18mb. Pretty impressive as on a good day I can only get 11 and BT say my line only supports 14

[Technical Ben]

Even better news for all you Mac users and converts. A lot of the steam games now support "Steam Play". This allows you to migrate and swap your game from PC to Mac, and back again, at any time! So you can play on the PC, save, go to you Mac and continue from there. No limits, no restarts. I will admit Steam has it's bugs and bad deals (like some games charging extra for what others give for free/inclusive) but that is a really good move by them.

[Niall]

It's something I've always thought all games should support. It's obvious that you'd benefit from it if you have more than one home PC, but if the other is a MAC then you wouldn't be able to use the saved game (unless there's a utility that allows these to be converted supplied by the game company, but I haven't heard of it).

[Steve]

The latest Snow Leopard Graphics update for certain machines seems to have brought a significant improvement in performance.

http://store.steampowered.com/news/4211/

[Bill]

That's available via Software Update... haven't installed it here as it doesn't seem to affect anything I use. It can wait until something more useful (to me) is released

[Steve]

I suppose it will be included with 10.6.5. I have installed it but doubt I'll use it . I even had to restart the machine.

[Bill]

I even had to restart the machine.

Well, it does warn you that a restart will be required!

[Steve]

It's good to check it will restart occasionally.

[Bill]

True