Portal "One-Fifth As Likely to Crash on a Mac" as on PC

[JRCB]

Yeah, now if only mine could load the textures. I guess this is what I get for owning an old Macbook.

 

[Delusibeta]

Yeah, Portal also looks like crap on Mac AND you take a 50 percent performance hit:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3726/quick-look-mac-os-x-portal-performance

Also, statistics are quite dubious. It is quite possible that "One fifth as likely to crash" isn't averaged out and that it is a direct comparison between the number of crashes meaning; Portal crashed 5k times under Mac and 25k under Windows. But, since there are 19 times more Windows PCs than there are Mac PCs, that is not very good for Mac?

GPU limitation for Mac version indicates crappy graphics card drivers, which is a hallmark of the Mac platform as a whole.

 

[PhunkyPhazon]

I don't know about crashing, but the Mac version was running kinda slowly for me at first. But it seems Valve's last patch/update fixed it, so they must have been pretty on the ball.

 

[Nivag the Owl]

That's good to know. If I ever decide to game on a non-gaming computer I'll bare this in mind.

 

[Exterminas]

Huh, Portal never crashed once on my PC, so I definatly should buy a Mac now, because a 20% Improval on perfection would be awesome. Am I doing it right, Mister Jobs?

 

[Woodsey]

Christ, don't show this to my Dad - he's Apple fucking mad at the minute.

 

[coldfrog]

Almost totally off-topic - Windosill went Steam? Crazy! I wonder if steam charges more than like a buck... I think I paid 5 for it, and I still go back in and play around with it occasionally. If you like web toys, you should check that thing out.

On topic, if these statistics are reliable and meaningful, I'm excited to see that Mac users are getting their fair share of PC gaming. All comments about Macs (or PCs for that matter) aside, opening up the player base to more users is a great thing.

 

[ActionDan]

I've seen the Fps difference between OSX and Windows 7 when playing Portal. On LOW settings, The most OSX gets is 37. The most Windows 7 gets is 247.

 

[Sir Kemper]

Killing Floor is an odd choice for what is basically a launch line-up, I'd have assumed they'd go with Team Fortress 2.

Killing Floor is an odd choice for what is basically a launch line-up, I'd have assumed they'd go with Team Fortress 2.

The thing Valve are showcasing this week is Mac vs PC gaming. I was really hoping for TF2 but i guess i'll have to wait a bit longer

Dont worry children, the glory of TF2 will grace your pale, pretentious computers soon enough.

I kid, I kid.

Anyway, I wouden't really diss Killing Floor, It's quite a good game actually! Definetly worth a try.

 

[Geoffrey42]

Those of you saying "dur, 20% of nothing! Science!" are completely missing the point, and I hope you realize that, but I lack the sufficient faith in humanity to actually believe that all of you do.

 

[ActionDan]

It's not the Mac that is the problem. It's the actual OS itself. Also, they are coding Portal in Open GL, not DirectX, and OpenGL is pretty crappy when it comes to that.

 

[Snotnarok]

What kind of statement is this to put out? After they just ran the numbers and the PC version out performs Mac who cares if it's "More likely to crash". But whatever to each their own.

 

[Steve the Pocket]

Wait, Valve collects crash statistics? Then I guess I've been submitting all those manual TF2 crash reports for nothing.

NOW they tell me.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Did you know that nine-tenths of all statistics are made up on the spot?

It's a widely-believed fact!

You sir, get a cookie


Which I then take from you for making that up on the spot! Muwahahahaha!

 

[bam13302]

my guess, during the last stage of QA testing (im sure the did it for both the PC and MAC to make sure the update wouldnt **** up Windows users) they encountered 20% less crashes on the MAC, or mac users couldnt figure out the steam forum to post that their game crashed, and instead just gave up and posted a youtube video ****ing about it

 

[Swarley]

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y49/LeadReaper/portalmac.jpg

 

[Paksenarrion]

A week after rolling out Steam for the Mac, Valve says that Portal [http://orange.half-life2.com/portal.html] is one-fifth as likely to crash on a Mac as it is on Windows.

Probably because Macs can't make an orange portal

Zing! Also, dammit, your avatar scares me.

 

[SimuLord]

Whenever Valve says anything about Portal, I'm disinclined to trust it because I picture GLaDOS saying it.

 

[TOGSolid]

Lucky Mac owners I guess. Less crashing is always a good thing. I wonder why it crashes less though.

It does kind of help that Macs are built like consoles with damn near identical hardware across all the systems (for instance the OS is specifically coded for the Intel processors that they use). Most Mac users are scared shitless to muck with the hardware in their systems and go with whatever defaults they're given. The Mac OS also automatically assumes its user is a moron which probably helps to keep the OS running and maintained.
Windows, on the other hand, has to deal with a wide variety of hardware and intelligence levels with a lot of people probably not even knowing what the word "defrag" means and wondering why their Athlon 2800+ is choking on Team Fortress 2.

This is hardly news. You're comparing a computer system that is tightly controlled with no real end user freedom vs one that is vastly more open and an insane amount of end user power. Of course the tightly controlled system is going to crash less on the whole, however look at everything it gives up.