Just when we were all thinking that gaming was dead on the Mac (aside from some fantastic indie stuff, and World of Warcraft), Valve have announced that they’re going to be heaving Steam over to the Mac. And not just the Steam platform, but future releases from Valve will work on both PC and Mac. Heck, they’re even touting the ability to play a game on the PC then finishing it off on the Mac using their Steam Cloud voodoo.

There’s more detail over at our sister site Gametactics, but I’m quite frankly happy with the slight warm glow of playing Portal on my Mac. I just hope this is a triumph and Valve make a note of this future huge success… Can’t I make Portal jokes!? C’mon!

[Gametactics]

In a complete surprise move, Apple have announced their tablet, the iPad. Ok, yeah, there was a complete lack of suspense…

The iPad houses a 9.7″ screen in a body that’s just half an inch thick and 1.5 pounds in weight. Does Wi-Fi, 3G, has a 10 hour battery, does the app thing too. Basically, it’s a really big iPhone/iPod Touch, with a bit more grunt behind it, to the point where most of the apps available for the iPhone will work with it already with no further modifications needed by the developers. You’ll also have the ability to dock a keyboard or camera onto it if you really want to replace your laptop.

It comes in 3 main flavours: 16GB for $499, 32GB for $599, 64GB for $699, however that’s just the Wi-Fi version. Add in 3G and you’re talking an extra $130 on each price.

Do I want one? Yes. Do I have a need for one? Not really.

Of course, I may change my mind. Price drop to something small? Next version has extras like a camera or two? Who knows what will make it indespensible to me…

Full PR after the jump

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The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco will play host to a meeting of tech journalists summoned by Apple to see their latest creation on the 27th of January. Wild and rife speculation is for a tablet PC (or a “really big iPhone”, to the luddites out there), although no-one at Apple has directly commented on what it would be.

Well, yes, OK, there was that Apple lawyer whom tried to take down Gawker’s contest to find out more information about this fabled and probably true tablet and in the wording seemed to confirm it’s existence, and the massive amount of legitimate news organisations reporting on it too without any word of denial from Apple, but there’s still no guarantees that when whomever (it might not even be a speech by Steve Jobs, even that hasn’t been officially told either) goes on stage to talk to the press does the grand reveal, that it would end up being the tablet.

Side point – If anyone is able to pay our airfare and can get us into the presentation, that would be fantastic. £2.50 and a Rubik’s Cube doesn’t get me to San Fran…

UK broadcasting giant the BBC sent their reporters over to CES to see the latest and greatest in gadgetry. However, they ended up with more than they bargained for…

Firstly, they were given a demonstration on how indestructible a hard drive from iosafe was. It was set on fire, soaked, dropped and crushed by a digger, yet still allowed the data to be readable after a little extracting from the remains. Given the BBC’s own video and also reports elsewhere such as bit-tech.net, I’m pretty amazed it survived through all of that.

The Beeb’s second triumph was over another product billing itself as unbreakable: the XP3 2.0 from Sonim. They said that if anyone managed to break the phone at CES, they’d get one for free. Cue BBC reporter dunking it in a fish tank, then proceeding to introduce the screen to a fish tank for a few seconds. Amazingly, he broke it on camera, with the CEO standing right next to him. Props to Bob Plaschke for taking the bad news well, although in their favour, the phone probably got hammered by every technology journalist in the city, so the single failure is probably acceptable.

Wouldn’t mind getting one for those times I head home to the farm…

[BBC 1, 2 and bit-tech.net]

It’s been a while, but now Google can loudly proclaim “Me Too!” when it comes to the Android Phone Party. One of the main bodies behind the Android movement, it’s been strange that Google hasn’t created it’s own phone, instead leaving it to others such as HTC to do all the hard work, but now Google has unleashed the Nexus One.

The Nexus One (still marked as HTC, but more under Google direction than anything) has a 3.7″ screen running at 480x800, 5 megapixel camera, noise suppression, trackball and personalized laser engraving (I suggest “It’s not an iPhone, honest!”)
It’ll also run pretty much anything from the Android Market, do voice recognition, allow you to read your voicemail and many other random tasks most normal people won’t actually do. Power users will have a field day with this.

Google are selling the phone for $529 unlocked through their own store, which is an interesting move, considering most people will first hear of the cost of phones in conjunction with a contract, which the order page already suggests at $179 and locked in for 2 years.

I do have to wonder if people will flock to this, or if the iPhone has nothing to worry about…

Press Release and Gallery after the jump.

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People whom already visit TM from their mobile phones will already know this, but I figure that since most of the kinks have been worked out of it, we can now tell you lot. TechMamba now has a mobile version!

Just use your vaguely web 2.0 useable portable telephony device, connect to the interwebnets and come to this site, and we’ll instantly check if we need to render the mobile site or not for you. If you want the full-fat experience, you’re free to do so by clicking a link within the mobile site.

Really, just go to www.techmamba.com on your phone’s browser, no different URL to remember at all. Or, if you have a QR Code reader on your phone, take a photo of this image, if only to save you seconds of typing…

Welcome, dear reader, to the year “Two Thousand And Ten”. Or “Twenty Ten”. Or to some people “MMX”.

We here at TM hope that this year in technology exceeds the last. Or keeps it at the same level but really cheap instead. In either case, here’s hoping…