Valve already had Wine on Linux to work with. Although we have Wine on Mac now, it is a subpar experience. Aside from that, Vulkan on MacOS never received official support from Apple

I would say Valve stand on the shoulder of giants with Wine and Vulkan, they just had tl connect the dots between the two.

If Apple itself would respect its gamer users it could spend sometime on these open projects, but knowing Apple, if they do anything it would be on a closed-source vendor lock-in style

None of that explains why the Steam client on Mac is so terrible and has been for a very long time.

Games have their own issues (you mentioned some). But the client is inexcusable.

What's so bad about it?

It used to be dog slow and horribly buggy but recently it's been quite fine. More and more games run native as well.

Mac is just another tightly closed platform, Valve could get squeezed from by Apple at any time. There's just no reason to invest in it.

If you can afford a Mac, you can afford a Steam Deck.

> just another tightly closed platform

No it’s not. You can download and install anything you want from the web. Just like Windows.

The Mac App Store isn’t required. Largely NO ONE uses it.

I imagine nearly everyone who runs macOS uses the App Store. Some apps are only available on it, and even some that are also available elsewhere are more convenient to install and keep up-to-date via the store.

You have to. Apple software is on it.

But compared to the iOS store it’s kind of a ghost town. Tons of popular software isn’t in it. It’s quite normal to just download software instead of even looking to see if it’s in there.

And if it is, App Store software must be fully and tightly sandboxed. Which prevents a lot of useful software from ever appearing in it.

Yep, I know. I was responding to:

> Largely NO ONE uses it.

Furthermore,

> App Store software must be fully and tightly sandboxed

I get that many things will not be able to function due to these restrictions, but for most software they are a good thing.

Sorry. I think I misread the tone of your comment.

For a lot of things I’m happy for sandboxing. Why should random games or todo apps need more access? But the fact you can’t get good backup software like Backblaze is a problem. They need more options for levels of sandboxing, including possibly none (with heavy review).

> Just like Windows.

And just like with Windows Valve is trying to build on an open platform instead.

They did care about Linux, which was an even smaller market that doesn't like to spend money and doesn't like closed source and DRM. Yet now everybody is singing their praises.

It stands to reason that Steam on Mac is bad in comparison because of Apple.

> It stands to reason that Steam on Mac is bad in comparison because of Apple.

How? It’s software like any other. There’s TONS of great software on the Mac made by 3rd parties. It can be nice. It can run fast. MS does it. Adobe does it. Indie developers do it. So why is it Apple’s fault?

The story tends that gets passed around is that no one at Valve (more or less) works in it.

I’m not talking about the games Steam sells. I’m talking about the Steam client.

If they rewrote it in Electron (instead of whatever custom thing it uses) they could do a terrible job and it would still be faster.

I’m not even asking for it to be “Mac like”, just act like showing a store page isn’t a Herculean effort.

I’ll credit both sides with the stubbornness. Apple had many years of poor integrated GPUs (arguably Intel’s fault) and even mediocre dedicated GPU options (due to a rift with NVidia).

Apple also fully dropped 32-bit support, breaking a lot of older games that had been ported to Mac on Steam.

Even Windows running on ARM has emulation for 32-bit x86 apps.

On Valve’s side they gave very little love to the Steam client on Mac and didn’t bother to update their own games (Half Life, Portal, Counterstrike, etc) to 64-bit to keep them working on Macs.

The biggest thing that has changed is now Apple ships much better GPU power even in its cheapest Macs. They still aren’t equivalent to dedicated gaming PCs but are plenty to run a huge library of casual and older games, if only there were a convenient and well-maintained path to running them.

Why would Valve do this for a trillion-dollar walled-garden?

Why release a crappy product on Mac and leave it that way for over a decade?

Don’t know. But that’s what they’ve done.

If I were Apple, I wouldn’t partner with someone who clearly didn’t give 2 shits about my platform.

(In reality Value doesn’t need Apple. And Apple would never partner anyway, they don’t do that)

Valve often does things because a person employed by Valve wanted to do that thing. And then that person moves on to other things. You don't need any grander explanation for "Valve ported the Steam launcher to OS X and now barely maintains it".

Because they "put customers first"? That seems to be the PR that people feel had them invest in Linux, but they forget it was more of a desperation move in a time where Windows may have been trying to strongarm 3rd party game stores out.

Very smart to leverage that failure of Steam Machine into a portable form factor. A bit ugly and clearly some cut corners, but the price saved on no Windows license speaks for itself.

Also, since I can’t edit my other reply, the Mac is not a walled garden.

You can use any tool to make apps and sell them online without having to get them approved in the Mac App Store (which almost no one buys from).