Incomming Hippies! (Steam/TF2 native on Mac)

[Purplecat]

You're just speaking typical "PC gamer FUD". Please stop, and quote sources instead of repeating what your friends have said. And what do EFI have to do with anything? It's just a replacement for the (very aged) BIOS system, the only reason you don't see it used on your average PC much is cause certain versions of Windows dosen't support EFI (all 64 bit versions does as far I know). L4D2 runs fine on several year old computers, I wouldn't be surprised you can probably run L4D2 fine on even the cheaper Macintosh computers that been around for over a year.

To be honest if you need to run a overclocked setup with cooling gear, Apple is probably not part of your target group. Unfortunately PC gamers think that most of the microcomputer (old term for what we call now "personal computer") marketshare belongs to them, when the majority of PC users are just people using it for writing letters, checking e-mail/facebook/the web in general. Netbooks had a huge surge of popularity, as despite being weak they were good enough for most people... plus being cheap and portable.

[STrRedWolf]

I'm going to make three points about "OH You need a gaming rig to play TF2."

First, let's pour over the specs straight from Apple for their current lineup. Core2 Duos for the laptops with NVidia Geforce 9400M's across the board, aka the ION platform. Higher-end MacBook Pros can boot against a NVidia Geforce 9600M for extra performance. For desktops, it's NVidia 9400's at the minimum; iMacs can have ATI Radeon HD 4670 or 4850 GPUs in them. And if you're plunking down serious cash, the Mac Pros can have NVidia Geforce 120's in SLI or a single ATI Radeon HD 4870; of course, you can swap it out of a Mac Pro because it's just a friggin EFI-running PC at that point.

Second, you can dual-boot into Windows or you can slap on a virtual PC system that brings the DirectX system over to the Mac side. Slower on the latter, but ether way.

But IT DOESN'T MATTER FOR TF2! I've played it on a 3 Ghz Pentium 4 laptop with an NVidia Geforce mobile 5-FX series card in it. The only difference is that the ubers gets shaded differently (strong color overlay instead of metalic color). TF2 will downgrade how it renders gracefully so it can keep the framerates up and keep the game going.

So, if you're going to say "But it needs high-end hardware" you're really saying "I wunt mai Crysis 2 luk purty." Better gamers will go for mid-line hardware because they know that technique trumps power; it's all how you play the game.

[Dr. Furry]

you mean all those players that have been playing on macs all this time were lying to me?

[STrRedWolf]

[STrRedWolf]

Word from a fellow fur in the Mac Beta... they only have Portal released for it at this time.

[Dr. Furry]

how do you shoot the orange portal?

[Tehrasha]

[STrRedWolf]

Hint to the Mac folk: Buy a two-button mouse. Any USB one will do, but I usually get ether Logitech or Microsoft wireless mice (not Bluetooth). It'll help with Portal (right click to shoot orange portal) and TF2 (alt-fire!)

[Dr. Furry]

and meleeing zombies. or you could could pay for an app that will make you flail so it could sometimes register as a right click

i went through thte available games for downloading on steam for macs, i got a chuckle when i saw that the great majority were under the casual genre