Steam on Mac - Crank it Up!
- Thread starter PabloTeK
- Start date
Eeeh, my Mac is a year old and still feels brand new whereas my old HP laptop felt pants after a year, that and OSX is an ergonomic delight! I'm glad to be free of Windows for the majority of my games, WoW and source engine games are about the only ones I play which is mega win 
Having played Portal on my MBP I can safely say it's exactly like using on a PC. Using a standard PC mouse it feels exactly like the PC version, performance is apparently slightly worse (I've yet to notice it) but that may be a function of having to use OpenGL as opposed to DirectX.
Geoff
VIP Member
Mac's have right click!!!!
Their external mice look like they only have one button, but there are left and right sensors. You can also just buy a different external mouse that has two distinct buttons.
tlarkin
VIP Member
I wish you could slap people with gloves over standard TCP/IP....come on man, Mac (not max) have had right click for YEARS! You were always able to hook up any third party mouse, even back in the classic OS days and if it had two buttons you got right click.
Apple OEM mice, for a while did not have two buttons, which is where this myth comes from.
joh06937
New Member
lol, fail.
i use a mac pretty regularly and i would definitely have to use a different mouse since the standard ones can be a little tricky trying to click one side after another really quickly. you often just end up not doing anything with the second click. but they do still nevertheless have the option
i would definitely love to see some performance comparisons. would there likely be any difference between a mac and pc running the same specs but (obviously) different os's? i have never looked up any performance benchmarks between the two...
epidemik
Active Member
[-0MEGA-];1470029 said:
What are the exact specs you guys are running?
I'm (hoping I'm) going to get a MBP for college next year. I'm looking at the cheapest 15inch model (2.5 i5, 4GB, nVidia 330M). I'd be soo stoked if it could run TF2 well.
Does your laptop start to heat up alot as you're playing?
Me too! I imagine they'll be out soon.
Geoff
VIP Member
2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
2GB DDR3 memory
250GB hard drive
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics w/256MB DDR3 Shared
Weird thing is, I talked to someone else who has a MacBook Pro from 2008 and they said they also got 30FPS.
Calibretto
VIP Member
Good to see everyone playing my all-time favorite game!
I actually ended up leisurely playing through it again today. Took me just under two hours, but I've beaten the game in under an hour and ten minutes in the past. Can't wait for Portal 2!
I actually ended up leisurely playing through it again today. Took me just under two hours, but I've beaten the game in under an hour and ten minutes in the past. Can't wait for Portal 2!
knockout34
New Member
lol, fail.
i use a mac pretty regularly and i would definitely have to use a different mouse since the standard ones can be a little tricky trying to click one side after another really quickly. you often just end up not doing anything with the second click. but they do still nevertheless have the option
i would definitely love to see some performance comparisons. would there likely be any difference between a mac and pc running the same specs but (obviously) different os's? i have never looked up any performance benchmarks between the two...
Technically if running the same specs the games would run the same BUT...
Many of the games available for Mac are 'ports' of their windows versions. The general consensus is that ports are of lower quality than if playing a game on the OS that it is intended for. For example, Dragon age origins is available on Mac as a Cider port but I've read that there is fairly significant performance loss if played on Mac and not windows. Until game makers start making their games for both Windows and Mac, you may notice a slight performance loss when playing on Mac. Thankfully, since Steam is available for Mac the quality and number of games should increase quickly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porting
And to epidemik, that comp will run TF2 with ease :good:
tlarkin
VIP Member
You are confusing two different terms. Cider is a translator, not a port. A port is when they actually rewrite code to fit a new platform, where as a translator just takes the language and APIs and translates it as best as possible.
OS X is lacking in the sets of APIs compared to Windows, which video card hardware takes advantage of via Direct X. However, Apple with the release of 10.5, did toss a bone to the developers called Core Animation.
Apple is still coming in late into the game. Give them some time and if the market catches on you will see more robust API support for hardware and gaming on the Macs.
