Blogs Valve claims Steam is five times more stable on Mac

They are talking about portal, not steam.

 

good article, Alex. I appreciate how you broke down the caveats to the claim.

 

Just another Windows/Mac argument

That said, I have run Steam a HELL of a lot longer on Windows (XP and 7) than I have the Mac and have had very little in the way of program instability (network stability, on the other hand...).

All I know is that I can play Killing Floor on my new MBP without switching to Windows right now

 

You mean both people who played portal for 10 minutes on the mac haven't had a crash yet?

Only kidding, it makes sense, stricter control of hardware and all that jazz.

Would be interesting to see some actual numbers/data.

 

Portal doesn't crash anyway. Get a load of Mac users playing L4D2 and the crashes will come rolling in

 

Title of blog is misleading - Steam isn't in question here, its the Source engine.

 

I'd love to see the stats split up by Windows OS and driver revision.

I'd put my money on saying that on a geforce system (same as OSX) and using a patched Win7 with latest stable GPU drivers from windows update, that there won't be any difference between macs and PCs

On a mac 99.9% of people (including me) just take the updates from Apple as they come, but on a PC you've got a bucket of flavours of OS across XP, Vista & Win7 and everyone and their dog is installing a different driver revision. Some from the CD, some from update, some direct, some beta etc etc.

So yes, of course an average mac is going to be more stable than an average PC.

Doesn't say that a Mac is more stable than a PC though. I've had a couple of lockups on my macbook pro, but I've NEVER had a crash or lockup on Windows7.

But I'll still say the average mac is more stable than the average PC, it's just my lovely i7 isn't average And neither are any of us here at BT, we're geeks - of course we'll get our PCs stable.

 

5 times more stable with 5 times less content, huh that fits right in line with the whole Mac OS is more stable which is a duh remark as it has no were near the amount of content that windows has to support. Ehh whatever I took a look at what the Mac Steam has to offer and its pretty well sad overall.

 

looks like a PR stunt from Valve.
But an average Mac is a £900+ system whilst the average PC is £600 machine.
You can't compare a Mac to PC
Unless you compare a Mac to a PC that you can buy for the price of that Mac model. In that case the PC is by far a winner imho

 

If there's a crash then it's Valve's shitty patches

 

5 times more stable? How do they calculate that?

Anyway, say I drive two cars: A Ferrari F40 and a Smart Car. I'm much more likely to crash in the F40 - but which one would I choose to drive?

And yes, I realise there's a whole load of ways you can actually say the F40's less likely to crash.

 

That entirely depends on how much you want to lose

 

Clear..... Title and somewhere in the middle

 

Well mac users usually like to talk about how much better os x is than windows, so they see this, download steam to prove a point, and valve have another potential customer. Sorted.

 

let me resolve that argument!

 

I'm a bit perplexed as to why Steam would even make a negative statement regarding PCs since that is their most profitable platform. Maybe Mac users are so enthralled about getting games from Steam they are producing more profit per capita. Nonetheless, it is highly illogical to conclude that Macs are five times more stable than PCs given the following conditions:

1) They have two weeks of experience running Steam on a Mac versus seven years on the PC.
2) There is a colossal disparity between the number of games than run on Mac versus Windows.
3) The sample set of this stability claim is based on games that were new on the PC years ago meaning many bugs were fixed prior to their Mac release.
4) Given the compatibility problems of different versions of Windows, the huge range of PC hardware, and greater number of PC users there will inherently be more problems compared to a Mac.

These are very simple concepts that must be considered when making this type of evaluation. While it's great Mac users are gaining access to computer games via Steam one should not get carried away when making a comparison Personally this seems like a poorly conceived PR move to counter the bad press about the Mac's performance and image quality in Portal versus Windows a week or so ago.

 

Meh, read the whole thing, and I am a Mac fanboy

 

I've never had Steam crash on me on Vista. I don't see how it could possibly have 2, let alone 5 times, more stability at a 100% stability record

 

HA! I like the Alien ships comment, could be a reference to Rodney McKays love of Macs on Stargate Atlantis?

 

independence day reference