Any possibility of Valve ending support for Steam on Mac the same year as 10.15

[wadmodder1999]

Even by using System Information on macOS Mojave (10.14) I don't Valve will ever make it out of the 32-bit macOS Application Support era beyond 2019.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/2/1744483505481156860/#c1744483505483189418

[Burczybrzuch]

m

[aiusepsi]

I should probably put this in a guide or something so I don't have to do write it over and over.

The Steam.app you download and put in your /Applications folder is a stub that just contains a copy of the Steam bootstrapper. When you run it, it basically just immediately hands off control to another copy of the Steam bootstrapper in "~/Library/Application Support/Steam", downloading that copy first it doesn't already exist. That second bootstrapper installs the rest of the client.

I imagine there's probably a good reason for this slightly convoluted structure, probably something to do with permissions, but anyway, the upshot is that the copy of the bootstrapper installed into /Applications isn't autoupdated, it's the same one you got when you first installed Steam. It's also what the System Report, er, reports on. Because it's old and it doesn't get updated, it's still 32-bit

The actual Steam client which is installed into "~/Library/Application Support/Steam" is actually 64-bit. You can confirm this by looking at the actual running process in Activity Monitor.

Now, the old bootstrapper in /Applications and the new one in "~/Library/Application Support/Steam" is still the same component that does the same job, so the fix if you really want the thing in System Report to say 64-bit is to just copy the new bootstrapper executable (it's called "steam_osx") over the top of the old one.

I've done this myself on my own install, and voilà:

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/949598805522084109/36B37ED24C8918C33FC1939C2EFD9273BFFD9E07/

So no, Valve aren't going to drop support for Mac in 10.15, because all the work, apart from the moral equivalent of running a one-line bash script to copy one file, has been done already.

[wadmodder1999]

Originally posted by aiusepsi:

So no, Valve aren't going to drop support for Mac in 10.15, because all the work, apart from the moral equivalent of running a one-line bash script to copy one file, has been done already.

Can anyone here make a standalone non-tutorial solution/version to this problem and upload the file type to Google Drive, Mega.nz, or MediaFire so that it's easier for user to make Steam 64-Bit on macOS?

[aiusepsi]

UPDATE 2019-06-12: The advice below is out-of-date. If you just reinstall Steam from https://store.steampowered.com/about/ (there's no need to uninstall the previous version, just copy the new over the top of the old) you'll get a 64-bit launcher stub installed by default, so you don't need to do what's written below.

-------------------------------------

The one-line bash script is:

cp -ipv ~/Library/Application\ Support/Steam/Steam.AppBundle/Steam/Contents/MacOS/steam_osx /Applications/Steam.app/Contents/MacOS/steam_osx

Copy and paste into the terminal. And because you should never c&p a command into your terminal before understanding what it does:

cp: copy a file from source to destination
-ipv: Prompt before overwriting (i), preserve all file metadata (p), be verbose and show what files are being copied (v)
~/Library/Application\ Support/Steam/Steam.AppBundle/Steam/Contents/MacOS/steam_osx: the location of the new 64-bit steam_osx
/Applications/Steam.app/Contents/MacOS/steam_osx: the location of the old 32-bit steam_osx we're going to overwrite.

[music411]

So, in other words, this is a non-issue other than the warning? Steam is fine and my Mac is fine and they will both work for now? I don't need to put in the above code unless I really want to get rid of the warning?

[aiusepsi]

Originally posted by music411:

So, in other words, this is a non-issue other than the warning? Steam is fine and my Mac is fine and they will both work for now? I don't need to put in the above code unless I really want to get rid of the warning?

Correct.

[music411]

I want to hi-five you.....

[wadmodder1999]

it actually works! Thanks.

[aramis1250]

Originally posted by aiusepsi:

(snip)
I've done this myself on my own install, and voilà:

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/949598805522084109/36B37ED24C8918C33FC1939C2EFD9273BFFD9E07/

So no, Valve aren't going to drop support for Mac in 10.15, because all the work, apart from the moral equivalent of running a one-line bash script to copy one file, has been done already.

If it is really just as simple as (essentially) a one-line bash script, WHY IS THIS STILL HAPPENING at all?? It really does cast aspersions on the capabilities of the Valve developer team that they couldn't have one developer spend one afternoon crafting an auto-update solution that *does* execute the actual—not moral—equivalent of a one-line bash script to copy one file, to actually fix the problem.

If it's simple enough for almost anyone to do it, yet no-one at Valve yet has, that is a serious, and damning, statement about their developers.

[Jonathan McEvoy]

Originally posted by aramis1250:

Originally posted by aiusepsi:

(snip)
I've done this myself on my own install, and voilà:

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/949598805522084109/36B37ED24C8918C33FC1939C2EFD9273BFFD9E07/

So no, Valve aren't going to drop support for Mac in 10.15, because all the work, apart from the moral equivalent of running a one-line bash script to copy one file, has been done already.

If it is really just as simple as (essentially) a one-line bash script, WHY IS THIS STILL HAPPENING at all?? It really does cast aspersions on the capabilities of the Valve developer team that they couldn't have one developer spend one afternoon crafting an auto-update solution that *does* execute the actual—not moral—equivalent of a one-line bash script to copy one file, to actually fix the problem.

If it's simple enough for almost anyone to do it, yet no-one at Valve yet has, that is a serious, and damning, statement about their developers.

It's only half a year until 10.15 is released this Autumn and if it's still 32-bit by September or October in 2019 when Mac OS 10.15 is released, I'll give Mac users a warning on not to update to 10.15 until Steam has been fully optimised to 64-bit (if it arrives at the System Preferences through software update then disable it and don't let Mac check for updates)?

[wadmodder1999]

cp -ipv ~/Library/Application\ Support/Steam/Steam.AppBundle/Steam/Contents/MacOS/steam_osx /Applications/Steam.app/Contents/MacOS/steam_osx

I wonder if this is possible on Valve's developed and published games on macOS versions made from Snow Leopard up to Mojave, not Catalina and later releases, by using CS:GO's 64-bit macOS executable as a source/replacement. Only time will tell.