Steam on a Mac?

Venkman90

I guess this is gaming...if not throw it over to Moe's Tech.

So, I love my shiny Macbook, and other than WoW and The Sims3 I tend not to miss any of the gaming I had previously, except for Steam and the joys that lay within.

Is Steam in anyway available on Mac OSX? I heard of a Wine or some such wizadry, like a Crossover? (god I am bad at OS tech speak). If it did run, could I do such dark magic as downloading Titan Quest or Left4Dead on OSX and play them? Gadzooks!

If anyone knows, I will pay for answers in tales of adventure.

Thankings :^:

Antihippy

Bootcamp.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boot_Camp_(software)

Otherwise nothing I'm afraid.

Running games in Wine would chug badly I think.

DHS Odium

No, no Steam on a mac. Furthermore, you would not want to play emulated L4D, even in the rare chance you could actually get it to run.

However, this thread brings up a curious point someone else might be able to expand upon. I'll be buying one of the new 13" Macbook Pros, assuming the local store finally gets their shipment. I'll also be running a boot camp partition, with Steam installed. I plan on getting the MacUpdate bundle for $50, which included Parallels.

I tend to leave Steam on all the time so I can get updates, and chat with friends to organize games. Can I use the Parallels feature that taps into a boot camp partition to run software, to run Steam in it's own window for these basic purposes? I would obviously boot into Windows if I was to play a game, but it seems like this feature should work perfectly, no?

I suspect that this is the approach the OP will want to take.

Zulkir

http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/

Will allow just what the OP is asking for, though I can't comment on how "smooth" the experience will be. Both Parallels and VMWare have an integrated mode (Coherence on Parallels) that allow you to run windows apps on the mac desktop. This *should* be capable of what your asking, I use VMWare and always did a full windows boot for Steam, so I've never tested it.

PeregrineFalcon

Here's the kind of blistering awesome performance you can expect from trying to emulate Steam games on OSX:
eks dee

Bootcamp that bitch.

ZackSchilling

Bootcamp is the only way to realistically play modern PC games. All other options are slow, often to the point of unplayability. Unless you're playing a 6 year old title, go for dedicated Windows.

However, feel free to pick up a virtualization product for other uses, like web development testing or running PC software like MS Office (if you don't want or don't like the Mac version, which is pretty trashy).

Venkman90

Looks like it's Bootcamp, but I would like to wait till I can get hold of Windows 7 as I don't want to put Vista on there.

Thanks

Moioink

I found Crossover very flakey and not worth the hassle. When it works it's very impressive but I kept coming across some very annoying bugs. Just use Boot Camp, it's way easier and you get better performance.

Antihippy

Venkman90 wrote: »

Looks like it's Bootcamp, but I would like to wait till I can get hold of Windows 7 as I don't want to put Vista on there.

Thanks

That's what I'm doing.

Windows 7 looks good so far.

PeregrineFalcon

Venkman90 wrote: »

Looks like it's Bootcamp, but I would like to wait till I can get hold of Windows 7 as I don't want to put Vista on there.

Thanks

Here you go.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/download.aspx

Venkman90

I had no idea it was so easy, cheers!

maximumzero

Crossover works fairly well as long as you're not a graphics Junkie. It works in DirectX 8 mode and has a great framerate, with the occasional hilariously misplaced texture (Like the Spy's face on the side of his gun)I have it installed for the quick fix every now and again, but about 75% of the time I'd rather switch into Boot Camp for TF2.

maximumzero

DHS Odium wrote: »

No, no Steam on a mac. Furthermore, you would not want to play emulated L4D, even in the rare chance you could actually get it to run.

However, this thread brings up a curious point someone else might be able to expand upon. I'll be buying one of the new 13" Macbook Pros, assuming the local store finally gets their shipment. I'll also be running a boot camp partition, with Steam installed. I plan on getting the MacUpdate bundle for $50, which included Parallels.

I tend to leave Steam on all the time so I can get updates, and chat with friends to organize games. Can I use the Parallels feature that taps into a boot camp partition to run software, to run Steam in it's own window for these basic purposes? I would obviously boot into Windows if I was to play a game, but it seems like this feature should work perfectly, no?

I suspect that this is the approach the OP will want to take.

Parallels works great for exactly what you're saying.

You can run it in Coherence mode so it's integrated into OS X (So you don't see the windows background, only the taskbar.) and all windows program windows are free-floating.

I do this for exactly what you say--chat and downloading steam stuff. Parallels can actually run games as well, though I haven't tried this.