Steam for Mac — A total bitch for anyone else? (nevermind)
Posted: 2010.05.13 (01:20)
Here's my experience with Steam so far: (Background info: I am not an administrator on the computer I use)
After downloading Steam and opening the disk image (.dmg), I dragged the app to a folder within my home folder. I launched it from there, and a "downloading update" dialog box appears. The update finishes downloading, it says "extracting package" for a split second, the dialog box disappears, and then Steam becomes unresponsive. After repeating this chain of events a few times, I decide to launch Steam from the disk image for the heck of it. I immediately get a different dialog box that says something along the lines of "Steam needs administrator access to update itself," prompting me for an Admin name and password.
So my mom enters her name and password, after which, the "downloading update" dialog box appears again (as expected). Unfortunately, this is all pointless. As you may or may not know, you can not save files to an existing .dmg file. Immediately after the download finishes, Steam does not freeze, but rather, it gives me this error message that says something along the lines of "Please make sure you aren't running Steam from it's disk image."
So, I dragged Steam to the Applications folder (my mom had to "authenticate" the transfer with a admin name/password, of course. -.-) and I convinced my mom to let me try and run steam from her (admin) account. Sure enough, after opening Steam from the applications folder on my mom's account, I get the same message that I got when trying to run Steam from the disk image. This is excellent news, because I'm not running Steam from a .dmg anymore, so I won't get any "you can't do that here" problems. Sure enough, Steam gives me a create account/login box!
To summarize, on my account, I don't get that special dialog box unless I'm running Steam through the .dmg (which is completely useless). It does appear in an admin account. Steam will only brings me to an actual login window if that special dialog box appears and is approved by an admin.
I figure that since my mom has allowed Steam to update itself by providing her name and password, the dialog box will never appear again, and Steam won't hang while I'm in my account. Just to make sure, I quit out of Steam and launch it again within my mom's account. The same stupid dialog box appears. I try again, and the same thing happens. Steam won't let me login at all until this dialog box is approved by an admin, and since the dialog box keeps coming back, I'll never be able to use Steam in my account because the dialog box never showed up in the first place.
I'd really like to log in and claim my free version of Portal. Maybe tomorrow I'll login on my mom's account and download it, then wait until Valve releases a new version of Steam. I'm really hoping I'm not the only one having these kind of problems.
After downloading Steam and opening the disk image (.dmg), I dragged the app to a folder within my home folder. I launched it from there, and a "downloading update" dialog box appears. The update finishes downloading, it says "extracting package" for a split second, the dialog box disappears, and then Steam becomes unresponsive. After repeating this chain of events a few times, I decide to launch Steam from the disk image for the heck of it. I immediately get a different dialog box that says something along the lines of "Steam needs administrator access to update itself," prompting me for an Admin name and password.
So my mom enters her name and password, after which, the "downloading update" dialog box appears again (as expected). Unfortunately, this is all pointless. As you may or may not know, you can not save files to an existing .dmg file. Immediately after the download finishes, Steam does not freeze, but rather, it gives me this error message that says something along the lines of "Please make sure you aren't running Steam from it's disk image."
So, I dragged Steam to the Applications folder (my mom had to "authenticate" the transfer with a admin name/password, of course. -.-) and I convinced my mom to let me try and run steam from her (admin) account. Sure enough, after opening Steam from the applications folder on my mom's account, I get the same message that I got when trying to run Steam from the disk image. This is excellent news, because I'm not running Steam from a .dmg anymore, so I won't get any "you can't do that here" problems. Sure enough, Steam gives me a create account/login box!
To summarize, on my account, I don't get that special dialog box unless I'm running Steam through the .dmg (which is completely useless). It does appear in an admin account. Steam will only brings me to an actual login window if that special dialog box appears and is approved by an admin.
I figure that since my mom has allowed Steam to update itself by providing her name and password, the dialog box will never appear again, and Steam won't hang while I'm in my account. Just to make sure, I quit out of Steam and launch it again within my mom's account. The same stupid dialog box appears. I try again, and the same thing happens. Steam won't let me login at all until this dialog box is approved by an admin, and since the dialog box keeps coming back, I'll never be able to use Steam in my account because the dialog box never showed up in the first place.
I'd really like to log in and claim my free version of Portal. Maybe tomorrow I'll login on my mom's account and download it, then wait until Valve releases a new version of Steam. I'm really hoping I'm not the only one having these kind of problems.