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Amazon's 7-Eleven lockers are very real, very gray, slated for Friday activation
After an arduous expedition that must've lasted hours, an intrepid frontiersman in the Seattle area has finally unearthed the Holy Grail of convenience store cubbies -- Amazon's elusive delivery locker, at 7-Eleven. GeekWire's John Cook discovered the prototype lockers at a 7-Eleven in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood, where store clerks told him that the system wouldn't be activated until Friday. According to Cook's description, the setup consists of about 40 different sized containers, centered around a keypad and monitor (neither of which was illuminated during his visit). All told, the array of P.O. Box-style cabinets stands about seven feet tall and is completely devoid of Amazon branding. The in-store pick-up program may roll out of a nationwide basis next summer, but you can check out a photographic sneak preview at the source link, below.
Valve: Coming to the Mac is "biggest event in Steam's history"
The good folks at Joystiq got to sit down and talk with John Cook, the director of Steam at Valve, and he says there's probably no comparison to the news about Steam coming to the Mac -- it is "the biggest event in Steam's history." He says that not only is it big news for the company and its services, but that one of the goals of the service will be to "prove" to other game developers that coming to this platform is important. Like PC gaming in general, Mac gaming isn't dead, "it just needs to be attacked from more directions than retail." Too true -- while PC gaming is suffering on the retail shelves, Mac games are having those same issues many times over. And with Apple taking a larger share of the desktop pie than ever, putting Steam games on the Mac platform is a huge benefit both for game companies and their customers. Cook says he hopes that "many, if not all" of the game companies with games on Steam will eventually bring their titles over to the Mac. Good news for us. He does knock down, however, the suggestion that Valve is coming to the Mac on the way to the iPhone -- Cook says the company is focused on the Mac right now. That doesn't rule out a move to the iPhone or the iPad, but for now, Steam on the Mac is a story that's plenty big. We can't wait to see the client running in April.
Interview: Steam on Mac OS X is 'the biggest event in Steam's history,' John Cook says
When Valve confirmed Mac support for Steam last week, I emailed the Joystiq team with the following claim: "this is arguably the biggest gaming news on Mac OS ever." It seems Valve shares the sentiment, as the company's John Cook – director of Steam development at Valve – calls it "the biggest event in Steam's history." He also answered some more of our questions via email, so read on! Joystiq: Just to clarify, Steam users with games already purchased on Windows and that have Mac versions available will have those Mac versions accessible to them immediately in Steam, for no extra charge? John Cook: This is supported by "Steam Play." We are using this feature to provide cross-platform access to all Valve games to those who already own the PC version. We hope other developers and publishers will use it in the same way. Some blogs have reported that Valve "hates the Mac" – From Gabe: "So, they seem to think that they want to do gaming, but there's never any follow through on any of the things they say they're going to do. That makes it hard to be excited about doing games for their platforms." So, as a followup, was Apple involved in this endeavor at all? Did they provide any programming resources or platform-level assistance? First, the statement that Gabe hates the Mac is erroneous. In fact, he worked on a 6Mhz Lisa running a Mac emulator in his first post-college job and is involved in the current Mac work on a daily basis. As for Apple, yes -- we've been working with them on this project and we're looking forward to expanding that relationship as we launch Steam for the Mac. %Gallery-87236%
