An interesting article about Steam . . .

Interesting article, even if it does fall in the Captain Obvious department. No third party DRM, faster and more servers, are all things everyone has been wanting for a long time.

That's why we have GOG to level the playing field, at least, for the DRM part (limited to old games).
In the perfect world, though, GOG will be the market leader, not Steam :)

I found it funny that someone asked for Mac support. If all the games are made for the PC, getting the client to run on a Mac doesn't change the fact that more than half of the games will be inaccessible to that user.

Not a very good article. It reads like someone whose only used Steam just recently for the sale and hasn't bothered researching some of the more significant issues.

Creating a mac version of the client may very well be the slight push that game developers need to port their games to that platform. Mac games are hard as fuck to get hold of, barring those that are released for both platforms on the same disc, and getting Steam on board with their quick-and-easy buy and download system would probably expand the market a lot.
I know there are a few retailers that specialise in mac games for physical or online distribution, and some others have even added a "mac" category to list the 4 or 5 dual-platform titles they carry, but none are well known enough to even try penetrating the potential Mac gaming market.

I don't have a Mac but I believe many PC games can be run under Wine.

You can run Windows on a Mac. Therefore you should be able to run Steam on a Mac. Just not on Mac OS.

Yup, I'd have to agree with this assessment. I like how they consider the choices of publishers to be flaws in Steam too. Like Valve are going to dictate to publishers that they must use Steamworks for online play and must get rid of third party DRM.
Unlike GOG, Valve don't have the balls for the latter and could you imagine the increased backlash for the former from other digital distributors and possibly brick and mortar retailers? (Such as the recent MW2 fiasco). Intelligent publishers* aren't going to like that as it'll lose them potential profit avenues.
* Yes I realise the probability of such publishers existing is slim to none...

Since when is the making it into every bestseller list out there is called "fiasco"?.

It's not made it into Direct2Drive's, GamersGates' or Impluse's bestseller lists ;)

There are THREE reforms which will improve any DD service (Some posess some of these, Steam has none)
1) Full parity between retail and digital ownership rights. IE, no more of this "We reserve the right to stop you from downloading your purchased games forever if we feel like it".
2) SOME kind of entrenched refund policy, even if it's a 50% refund within 3 days...better than nothing.
3) SOME kind of resale policy.
Regarding #1, Impulse will notify an account they intend to ban, and give them X days to download anything they have yet to, and they have told me they would refund undownloaded titles in that situation if requested. That's a step in the right direction.

I bought a game from GamersGate and it was presented as DRM Free, but in fact it had Tages on it. I had downloaded the received my activation code and installed until it came to the point of having to do an online activation. I stopped at that point and contacted GG.
With a day I got a mail back and they thought I must be mistaken, then the next day they informed me I was correct and it was not DRM Free, so they gave me a full refund of the purchase price with no hassle what-so-ever.
I think they did the right and honest thing.

There's zero mention of the regional price fixing. Also there's the fact that all your games would be affected by an account ban. An account ban that is issued immediately even before a review of the evidence pertaining to why exactly it is they feel such a ban is necessary.
And yes, there does seem to be a lack of publishers with common sense.