The Intarwebs had been abuzz lately, over some "leaked" images from Valve (known as the makers of a little-known game series called Half-Life, among other things), which featured several Apple-centric images such as: Half-Life protagonist Gordon Freeman donning a gleaming, iMac-like suit with a partially obscured Apple logo, and the Heavy character from Team Fortress 2 in an iPod advertisement pose. The rumour has since been confirmed, and this April, Valve will be porting several big valve releases to OSX, including TF2, Left 4 Dead, and the sequel to the wonderful surprise hit Portal, all to be released through an OSX version of the company's Steam distribution service.






This got me wondering exactly why Macs have never really been known as a gaming platform, expecially when you consider that the computer line that proceeded them, the venerable Apple II line, is one of the greatest computer gaming platforms of all time, pretty much establishing the "PC gaming" market, with literally thousands of game titles released over the life of the various Apple II iterations.

One reason might be that, while the Apple II introduced colour to the personal computer, the inital Macintoshes, from their inception in 1984 up until 1987, sported only monochrome monitors that would hardly do games justice. This kind of start for the line severely hobbled it as a gaming rig. Another reason could be that, up until the processor switch in 2006 from PPC CPUs to the same kind of Intel processors used in Windows machines, the Macs were seen as closed, proprietary systems that were not very friendly to game programmers. Or perhaps it's simply a question of numbers: Macs just don't have the kind of market share that Windows based computers enjoy, and thus represent to small of a market for publishers sinking millions into the development of their big, marquee games. But Apple's share of the PC pie has grown remarkably over the last few years, with analysts prediciting they could be commanding a 12% share in 2011 in the U.S..

With Valve giving its blessing to the Mac as a viable gaming machine, perhaps the long and illustrious Macintosh line has finally reached the pivot point for gaming goodness.

EDIT* I'd like to add a commendation to Valve for the way they're doing this. If you already own any Source game on the PC, like TF2, you get the Mac version automatically, for free. Also, Mac and PC gamers will be able to fight together on the same server. Attention, UBIsoft, THIS is how to treat your customers. You FACILITATE their gaming, not deprive them of it, with draconian DRM methods.

Some of you already know this, but for those of you that do not. Beautiful People's Club has a group on Facebook.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=4 ... 630&ref=mf]



So if you have a Facebook profile you can join the group. You may also want to add your PSN under the Discussion Tab so we'll know who you are

Tonight's gaming event celebrates the latest DLC for the awesome Borderlands, The Secret Armory of Gen. Knoxx. Click here to sign up and join us for a run at Knoxx's private stash.

A bunch of us finished a recording session this weekend, on what we hope will be a new regular feature of the BPC experience, in the very near future. Stay tuned!

I also wanted to point out a rather fantastic iPhone app I picked up the other day. Reqall is a kind of memory enhancer program, whose crux is that you can make eyes-free reminders on the iPhone through voice recognition, and it actually transcribes to text very accurately. So, you're thinking, "I need another to-do program like I need a hole in my iPhone screen". Well, Reqall brings a few things to the table. Along from the alarmingly accurate VOX recognition comes: verbal keywords to automate the process of assigning due dates and times to messages, giving messages a place via GPS or Google Maps so they pop-up when you arrive there, push notifications, integration with Evernote and Google Calender, and a whole lot more. It's free to try, and then a $25 yearly subscription after that. It's really startlingly useful.

I'd like to take a moment and welcome all our new members. We're always excited to see someone new added to our little corner of the interwebs. We hope you enjoy your time here amongst your fellow "BPCers". You're sure to find many new friends here at Beautiful Peoples Club.

The best way for us to get know to you - and for you to get to know all the wonderful people of BPC - is to post an introduction in the Intro thread located --> HERE. We'd also love to hear about how you found out about our little group, so if you add an intro tell us how you found out about BPC.

Also, take a moment and check out the Calendar (located up there just below the banner) for updated Calendar events. We'll be starting our 4th Season of Poker so look for that shortly on the calendar. We have premier events for the more popular games like M.A.G, Uncharted 2, or any other Multi-player that all us BPCers get a addicted to.

We also sport a nifty Chat Room where you can often times find many of our active members chatting away - its also a great place to get to know your fellow gamers.