this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2024
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If anyone is confused by the title and conclusion of the article I think its because the author buried the real thesis. I think its this:
"It's now a slow and clunky barrier to playing the games I own on my Mac computers—a far cry from the pro-consumer persona that Valve and Steam usually enjoy."
The author is upset Valve isn't supporting the author's Mac gaming desires.
About 30% of the article is directly referencing Steam on Mac with another 30% indirectly. It feels like the author is looking at the small niche of Mac gaming overall, the decline of Valve's interest in Mac, and projecting that decline to every other aspect of Valve. To the author's credit, they point to some massive changes in the Mac ecosystem which invalidated lots of Valve's efforts (Apple deprecating 32 bit support in the OS, full CPU change from Intel to ARM) but they seem to lay the blame at Valve's feet for not pouring development effort into Steam for Mac despite the extremely small market share Mac gaming seems to have.
The author even cites Valve's continued use of 32-bit executable on Windows and Linux as a failing of the company. The irony is that I'm guessing the continued use of the 32-bit code is what has enabled Steam's large and deep compatibly across systems. This further underscores Valve's choice to largely abandon Mac, as Apple removed the option to continue operating on the 32-bit client base.
To the author, your complaints should be directed at Apple, not Valve.
Steam only being 32-bit isn’t improving compatibility, it’s being lazy. You can write code that works on both architectures for the best performance and compatibility across all PCs, like Chrome, Firefox, MS Office, etc.
Compatibility is greatly being improved, making gaming on Linux very compatible. Steam runs great on both Windows and Linux. Chromebooks aren't made for gaming. And Apple is being Apple, so... Maybe complain about Apple instead. But if you are an Apple user you probably prefer to blame anything but Apple.
"prefer to blame anyone but apple"
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