Valve have finally announced support for the Mac platform, hoooraaar! Yes, that’s right folks, Half-Life & Co will soon be available for your Apple machines. After a series of image leaks, Valve released a statement saying they intended to release their game download service, Steam, in April. I, for one, cannot wait! (as you can probably tell)

Not only will we see the majority of Valve’s titles ported to the Mac, but we’ll also be treated to a simultaneous release of Portal 2 on PC & Mac. Another interesting prospect is that cross platform online gaming will be available, Mac vs PC war-fest anyone?

This announcement is just one less reason for me to be running Windows on my iMac. The only reason I ever have is to play games. There is a major annoyance factor involved in rebooting the machine into Windows just to have a blast on a game. I usually leave my Mac go to sleep, and have all my most used programs open and ready to jump back to. Shutting everything down is a big no no for moi!

Even better news is the fact any purchases on the PC version of Steam will lead to the Mac equivalent being completely free (and I guess vice versa) Great news for me as I have Half-Life 2, and also Episodes One and Two of said game available to download!

So now it’s only a matter of weeks before my 27-inch iMac (i7 incidentally! (stop bragging)) flexes it’s muscles and tears up some Half-Life 2, hell yes!

Here’s my first attempt at a podcast, I tried running Half-Life 2 on my Samsung NC10 Netbook, the results weren’t as bad as you would think. Check it out.