Macs are great, except for when you want to play video games on them. Instead, OSX users rejoice whenever new and exciting titles are announced for the platform, and today is no exception. Kotaku has officially confirmed that along with the Steam software, Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal, and the Half-Life series are coming to Mac.

“As we transition from entertainment as a product to entertainment as a service, customers and developers need open, high-quality Internet clients,” said Gabe Newell, President of Valve. “The Mac is a great platform for entertainment services.”

This announcement has been rumored for awhile, as Mac-specific graphics were discovered in the beta files for the new Steam service last month. Valve dropped some serious hints later, with the release of some images of Valve games integrated with some familiar Mac themes.

Even more exciting is the new feature Steam Play, which will allow anyone who purchases a game on Steam for PC to download and play it for Mac, and vice versa, with no extra charge. Valve also hopes to release titles for Mac on the same day as the PC versions. The first simultaneous release for PC and Mac on Steam will be Portal 2, which was announced earlier this month.

Yesterday, Apple reported its financial results for Q1 2010, which ended December 26, 2009, and said results were, to say the least, impressive. The company had its all time highest quarterly revenue and its all time highest quarterly profit.

Here are the important numbers:

• Revenue of $15.68 Billion

• 58% of revenue derived from international sales

• Net quarterly profit of $3.38 Billion or $3.67 per diluted share

• Gross margin of 40.9 %

• $5.8 Billion generated in cash

Sales of Macintosh computers and iPhones blew up with Apple selling 3.36 Million computers and 8.7 Million iPhones, representing a 33% increase for Macintosh sales and 100% growth for the iPhone when compared to Q1 2009.

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This week, those of you who love the Mac but need to use Windows 7 for some reason, just got a little more help from Apple as the company has updated Bootcamp to support Windows 7. The Boot Camp 3.1 update consists of a single .exe file download that you need to run in Windows 7 once it’s installed. Or you can just run Apple Software Update if you’re already using Windows 7 on your Mac.

The update provides the necessary Windows 7 drivers for various pieces of Mac hardware including the Mighty Mouse. Boot Camp version 3.1 supports the 32-bit and 64-bit version of Windows 7 and Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate are supported as part of the update as well.

With the upgrade in software and support for new drivers and utilities, if you need Windows 7 to run certain software, processes, or perhaps you prefer to use Windows for things like coding and development, now you can. Although, not sure why you would want to if you have a Mac. But hey, we don’t judge here.

Apple has also published a support document that details a number of installation problems for Windows 7, plus a tool to assist with upgrades from Windows Vista to Windows 7.

As Apple often does, everyone’s favorite fruit-flavored computer company quietly give their flagship line of professional computers, the Mac Pro, a bump in speed. They also included new storage options such as 2 TB 7200 RPM drives for the towers as well in this bit of enhancement magic. For the quad-core Mac Pro (but not the eight-core model), you can now order a 3.33 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Nehalem” processor which, if you don’t know, is pretty darn fast.

This baby has 8 MB of fully shared L3 cache, Hyper-Threading technology, an integrated memory controller, Turbo Boost for short bursts of speed up to 3.6 GHz and can really blow the doors off any kind of intense rendering tasks like you find in Photoshop, After Effects, Final Cut Pro or similar. In short, if you’re a high-end graphics or video professional, your job, and making those tight deadlines, just got easier.

We were wondering what had happend with Apple’s top of the line Mac since the introduction the new 27″ Intel Core i7 iMac in October. Traditionally, the Mac Pro is the performance king and it was a bit odd that the line had not had an update. Fortunately, Apple has remedied that situation now. The new Mac Pro options are available today at Apple’s online store.

Today, Microsoft released Service Pack 2 for Office 2008. This update brings several improvements and fixes to the office suite, including improved speed and stability to Word and Excel, new features in PowerPoint and improvements when connecting to SharePoint servers.

According to Microsoft: “There’s never been a better time to try Office 2008 for Mac — with SP2 we are not only delivering on top customer requests midcycle, but also taking a first step in bringing Microsoft software plus services to Mac users,” said Mike Tedesco, senior product manager for MacBU at Microsoft. “This connection unlocks the door for Mac users to Microsoft services for easier collaboration and file sharing with colleagues, customers and classmates.”

Here’s a brief summary of the highlights:

• PowerPoint 2008: Custom Path Animation, which adds the ability to author motion-path animations and Default Theme, which lets users define their default theme, including fonts, color scheme and slide layouts.

• Word 2008, Excel 2008: Increased speed (particularly when launching and scrolling).

• Expanded Mac browser support in Microsoft Office Live Workspace to include Safari 4.

• Microsoft Document Connection. Document Connection is a new application that improves the SharePoint experience for Mac users, allowing for easier collaboration within a SharePoint environment by simplifying how users can browse, access and manage files online and offline.

For a complete lists of changes, go here. To get the update, run Microsoft AutoUpdate on your Mac or go to the Microsoft Mac Downloads page. It’s there now so go get it!

Of the writers who work here at The Flickcast, we mostly use Macs to get our work done. The hardware just seems to be conducive to creativity and doesn’t get in the way of what you want to accomplish. Of course, what’s great hardware without great software? Fortunately, there’s a lot of software available for the Mac right now, with more coming out all the time.

Speaking of software, the folks at Kagi are at it again and offering a brand new bunch of useful Mac software, called the Mac Bundles, for your use and enjoyment. Want to know more? Here’s some of the info from the official Kagi press release:

Last month Kagi was pleased to announce the debut of a unique bundle of Mac software. This month a new complement of Mac software titles premieres at TheMacBundles and on Kagi’s own home page with savings of 80% off retail. Often smaller software developers have little opportunity to get widespread exposure to for their software without giving up a significant portion of their revenue. With the launch of TheMacBundles, developers have market presence and a fair share of the profits.

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Let’s be honest, Apple makes some pretty great stuff. From iPhones to iPods, MacBook Pros to MacBooks, the company’s products are innovative, stylish and fun to use. They’ve carved out a well- deserved reputation for making some of the best products around full of great and useful features.

Up until now, the usefulness and features of Apple’s latest MacBook computers have been pretty well documented. Fortunately, there’s one more awesome new feature that most people don’t know about that we can bring you today in this video taken by Mac lover COREANOMAC.

Trying to put into words just how awesome this new, previously undocumented feature of the MacBook is would be an exercise in futility. You’ll just have to watch the video after the break and see for yourself. Believe me, once you’ve seen it, you’ll never look at your plain, old laptop the same way again.

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