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]

This time of year makes me feel so warm and fuzzy. No, not the proximity to Christmas, I mean MacHeist Bonus Season!

Every year. MacHeist sends thousands of Mac users on a wild goose chase in an effort to win free software and also to get discounts on a fantastic bundle at the end of it, as I’ve said before, but last year there was a Christmas bonus which practically gave software away.

This year: They’re doing it again, and it’s stupidly easy to get freebies, since there’s 7 pieces of software available from the get go.
ShoveBox – Storage for tiny scraps of info you need to remember but a single clipboard won’t do.
WriteRoom – Excellent distraction free word processor that I use already.
Twitterrific – A Twitter client.
TinyGrab – Screenshot grabbing app.
Hordes of Orcs – Tower Defence in 3D.
Mariner Write – A powerful word processor (available when 500,000 people claim the main pack for free)
Virus Barrier – Anti-Virus for your Mac (available when promoting through Facebook)

There’s only 3 days left to claim this, and who knows what fun will happen next…

[MacHeist]

It’s that time of year again, and Macheist is already in full flow.
For those that don’t know, Macheist gives you the chance to pretend being an “elite hacker dude” by doing missions (like this now expired lockbox puzzle), using programs to decipher puzzles and reading funny content whilst doing so. As you take part, you can earn yourself mac software and some tiny cuts off the final bundle price offered at the end of it all.

Thoroughly enjoyable to take part in, especially with all of the help that the forum offers. And the software is quite nice too…

Now go, brave warrior.

One of the most major problems in the software market is that of piracy, and for the most part this has been dealt with quite badly. Over time, more and more copy protection systems have been put to work to stop unpaid software usage, whilst at the same time creating even more hoops for legitimate customers to jump through in order to use the software they’ve actually bought…

Cue this screenshot (click to see it properly) from USB Overdrive X:

A couple of things. Firstly, hats off to the developer for realising that using even more DRM would hurt the consumer.
Secondly, this is brilliant. Guilt-tripping would-be pirates and yet still allowing the use of the software, hoping that the user would do the right thing in the end, and if I were reading this on software I would certainly think about it.
Thirdly, “Shame On Me” button: Epic…

[Via Digg]

Apple, a company known for making… Apple products… will not be attending MacWorld for 2010, a celebration of…. Apple products. Will this mean the death of MacWorld as others pull out because Apple won’t be there? The organisers are fine with continuing though…

Even worse – The man that they all want to see, Steve Jobs will not be there for the one coming up in January. What does this mean? And I don’t mean for MacWorld, I mean for Apple itself. Having the (excuse the street vernacular) “Big Dog in the House” (sorry) made MacWorld feel like a mighty important event each year and that Apple’s hype-machine was doing it’s job properly.

Now, the world will have to put up with Phil Schiller instead…

[Via Engadget]

MacMall have decided to drop their prices on… well… Macs… for Black Friday. If you wanted to get a mac, I’d suggest trying to get one now rather than later. There’s a rather nice chart of prices over at MacRumors showing off a nice smattering of offers and where the best place to get them would be, and most of them point to the aforementioned MacMall. All of the offers end at Friday night midnight P.T.

Come on, you can get a 17″ 2.5GHz MB Pro for $250 less, surely that’s worth a look.

[Via MacRumors]