SearchStarcraft 2 Beta released for Macs
Posted by Eric "Puremiss" Tian 4 months ago
It's been a long and hard wait for us Mac folk, however Blizzard has at last relieved a portion of the Mac community of their arduous wait, and has released the Starcraft 2 Mac Beta Client.At: 04/28/2010 07:52:27 PM PDT Blizzard Poster Zarhym announced:
The StarCraft II Mac beta client is now available for testing on North American servers, and we encourage Mac users to download this client through Battle.net and begin testing. We plan on expanding the Mac beta to support additional regions and languages in the near future.
To download the Macintosh client simply log in to your account on Battle.net, navigate to the account management page for Starcraft II Beta, and download the client from there.
The anticipation...
And for those outside the North American server still waiting on Mac clients, there is no reason to believe that Blizzard will not expand the region support soon, as they clearly have a readily working beta client. To those on Windows this may seem marginal, however it definitely exciting for those on Macs, as it saves a good amount of effort just to play the game.
UPDATE: I have just installed and tested the Mac client and surveyed/asked around for other people's experiences with the client, and the general consensus is that unfortunately: the mac client runs considerably less efficient than the windows client.
Specs/Performance:
-Almost unplayable at Medium settings on Macbook Pros before 2009/2010. (and definitely not enjoyable)
-The later 2009 Macbook Pros seem to run the client decently well
-The recently released i5 Macbook Pros runs the beta with not much problems
-Unplayable on Mac Minis
-Unplayable on Macbooks (no reports, but if it's unplayable on some Macbook Pros, a regular Macbook probably can't run it)
-I assume that the client would run OK on a more recent Mac desktop, although there have been no reports for or against this.
Definitely most of the Mac portable machines apart from the most recent Macbook Pros will have a very tough time running this. I guess its back to Boot Camp Windows XP for me.
| Links |
| Battle.net - Forums |
1
| Hell, it's about time! |
| downloading now :) |
| AWesome! took em long enough tho... |
| hmm now the question is if i can play the beta this weekend, i live in Sweden. |
| Mac sucks just get a normal PC. |
| This is great! I just bought a new mac, the timing is perfect! :P |
| nice to see another platform supported :) |
| be sure to check out the "update", its a little grim |
| They just haven't optimized OpenGL engine. I guess it's even in an alpha stage. So I believe they will optimize it with time and it wont be slower than windows version. |
| For some reason I cannot download the torrent-client from eu.battle.net? Anyone having the same error? :( I wanna watch replays from my macbook!! edit: oh, NA only... :( |
| It would be good if you guys would specify WHICH macbook pros are running it. The ones with the integrated graphics card (13") or only the bigger ones with the individual graphics card (15", 17")? I have a 2009/10er macbook pro 13". Really hope it will work. Also, how does the replaywatching work again? Just download the client and drop replay files onto it or do you have alter things? |
| KRN, I have been running sc2 on w7 on the same model macbook, i'd say it works fine just to watch replays, havent tried gaming on it :) I dont know how it will run on osx |
Macs are  |
| If my 2 month old Macbook cant run this im gonna flip fucking out. It should be all right, only the Graphics card is a problem i think... I have 2,2 GHz, 4g ram etc but only NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics card. Is this the problem? Too little videoram? |
| Anyway, great that it has finally come. Now i all i do is pray it will work. |
| When are people going to learn that Macs are not for gaming. Mac is for people who think they're rich/interesting and want a crappy laptop that looks good. |
| MacBook is pretty fine, assuming Apple might put *VA matrixes there (but better is IPS, like in iPad). Computer components are fine, but MBP indeed overpriced. I really expect from Apple to include IPS panels into their MBP - I _will_ buy MBP with LED/IPS panel ... For the moment there are no laptops with IPS panels... For me it's a deal breaker - I won't buy laptop with cheap TN picture and aweful angles. |
| release is near! |
| Haha, nice, good luck to mac users ;) |
| Cool xD When blizzard make a SC2 4 linux??? |
Sweet!! lucky I use windows :) wonder if Idra will change to a Mac  |
| Good for Mac users I suposse, never played anything on a Mac though |
| key! |
| @12 Great! That it is quite a relief :) |
Have fun ... And good luck getting a beta key  |
| Finally, i think that a lot of people was really looking forward it btw do am i wrong or the game is bigger in the mac's version than in the window's one? |
| PC is a bicycle, and MAC is a bicycle with no pedals that "looks cooler". what would you ride? |
| About time imho. I my self use Windows but I can imagine what's been to those mac users who weren't able to play sc2 till now. GJ Blizzard |
| Finally it arrives for MAC! i have alot of freinds that have been dying to try this out with their beta accs on their mac computer, and now luckily they can! great stuff! |
| Come on already blizz. Ive been waiting all day^^ |
| it's a good idea. Finally it's becoming true. |
| good new! well, at least Mac users don`t have to emulate windows anymore in order to play the beta, or maybe the have to if its unplayable as the update says |
| i hope the delay goes only for beta and that the final product can be both on mac and PC in the same time |
| i got a mac book, and im defiantly going to install it there. |
Good new now maс users will ask the keys also  |
| I'm looking at purchasing a 13" MacBook Pro (Mid 2009). The specs should be good enough for SC2 (2.26 ghz, GeForce 9400M G), but seeing this worries me. I'm sure they'll fix any problems with the client before release, but I'm just not that patient, and the old lady has hi-jacked my PC to play Theme Hospital.. Has anyone tried it on that model of Mac? |
Nice news for macs owner  |
| I wanna be a tester on my mac |
| @aphasie, @austerlitz, my PC laptop is Core 2 Duo 2.1 GHz along with 3 GB memory and my graphics card is Nvidia 9300M. SC2 works only on the lowest possible settings (with graphics even worse than WC3) and it still works painfully slow when the game gets too many units. So don't be too optimistic :) |
| "we encourage Mac users to download this client through Battle.net and begin testing." - Does this mean that mac users won't need beta keys to play SC II beta? :D |
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