In Perspective - Steam OS

What you've heard

Likely nothing, this story broke like an hour ago.

What you WILL hear

SUCK IT MICROSOFT...and to a lesser, non-caps degree, suck it Apple and Google. You’ve had long enough to make a cheap, open OS that speaks to the people who are using it and you haven’t delivered. Motivated by profit and your desire to keep us tied to your own products, you've made the operating system more and more expensive and less and less open. No more! Steam OS is here to create an open experience for free. This is the first salvo in the REAL OS wars. Be afraid; Gabe is coming for you!

Except

This is a great example of the media both under-selling and over-selling things at the same time. They are over-selling the fact that it’s an OS and under-selling the features of that OS, which is really the important part of this story. The OS allows for streaming between Steam on any computer and a second computer running the Steam OS, while allowing a platform for Family Share and other Steam features. Although it will almost certainly be supported by custom hardware for the non-computer types, someone with the know-how could install this on a Raspberry Pi and get a system hooked into a TV that would allow anyone in the family access to everyone's Steam accounts. They could play Flash quality games like “Binding of Isaac” native, while streaming others from a gaming rig, for less than $100. It’s a huge step forward and something I’m personally excited about, but make no mistake; that gaming rig is required and runs Windows.

So what’s the deal?

Microsoft, Google and Apple have declared, to quote Apple, “thermonuclear war” on each other, creating gated communities (or walled gardens) where Apple products require Apple OS and Microsoft products require Windows. Like the Xbox? Then don’t even dream of buying a Mac, because Xbox is developing new features every day that require you to have a Windows PC. Have a Chromebook? Your Android phone just went from great to awesome, as you’ll find hundreds of features you didn't know existed that allow the two to communicate in a way they never could with your PC. This is the world we live in, and when Gabe said “Steam OS” a lot of people took this to mean he was tossing his hat in the ring. And why not, he’s said previously that he hates Windows 8 and DirectX because of how restrictive they are on gaming. But Steam, for all its dominance as a distribution network, is a horrible platform for a true OS. With the iPhone5 S and C, Apple OSX added more new users in the past 72 hours than Steam has ever had. They are just not at that level. Gabe has also never spoken out about Microsoft, or Windows itself as being horrible things he doesn't want to work with; only that Windows 8 was a step in the wrong direction. But the most obvious reason you are hearing things covered the way they are is that Steam, even more than Google, is the “white hat” of the computer wars. We desperately WANT them to make a walled garden we can hang out in, because we know it’s going to be a wonderful place. Someday, I’m sure ... but not someday soon.