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Comment by JohnDeHope | Hacker News Reader

> how much faster would a non-Windows machine have to be

Until Macs run games, it's a pointless comparison. If Steam did for Macs what they did for Linux, then we'd have something interesting to talk about. But a PC without games is about as attractive as... a Ferrari, I guess. If somebody handed me a free 200K$ sports car, I'd just sell it. It's useless for my lifestyle. A PC that can't play games is equally useless to me.

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Steam exists on Mac, and while there are plenty of games that don't have Mac ports that I wish I could play (Stray being the most recent), there are still enough to keep me perpetually backlogged, and the limits are probably best for my wallet and productivity anyway.

Steam exists on the mac and steam exists on linux. The need for linux ports is dwindling now that Steam has developed proton, a sort of rosetta that converts directx api calls into vulkan api calls, on linux

Steam exists on macOS, but honestly it feels like a second class citizen to me. Lots of the games that used to work fine no longer work because they are 32-bit and are no longer supported on current macOS releases, which only support 64-bit binaries. We can argue back and forth all day about whether this is Apple’s fault or the developers’ fault, but a key giveaway to me is that Portal and Portal 2, which are (arguably at least) flagship games for Valve, have not have 64-but releases. I get that it’s not as simple as a recompile & release, but to my mind it’s a bit of a giveaway that macOS doesn’t seem to have enough gaming market share to force a re-release on 64-bit for all these games.

As a huge fan of the Portal games, I feel your pain. I really miss them. Unfortunately Valve doesn't really seem to be in the market of making actual games anymore, so we'll probably never see a 64-bit upgrade.

But like I said, I've still got other games to play. I've long ago made peace with the idea that I just can't play every game I want to play at any time on my Mac, and that's fine. Others will have a different opinion and that's fine too.

Valve released a cutting edge VR game two years ago.

Steam isn't the problem. Steam is just a portal through with you run games. And on Mac, that portal is mostly empty.

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