EA’s Origin is meant to be a one-stop shop for gaming: so long as you have a Windows PC, you can shop for games and play them via the Origin platform. (Think
Steam.) Origin overcame
early skepticism (and a coupon debacle in which it inadvertently gave away free games) and is now expanding to the Mac platform. Only a few thousand U.S. and U.K. users will be able to
download Origin for Mac initially.
For now, Mac support is in Alpha, and it’s incomplete. There is no store, for example, but the tab is there and Origin expects to make that live by the official launch. That’s true of certain other features, too, like Twitch. The same goes for the title catalog, which is limited at the moment. On the upside, if you’re one of the Alpa users, you’ll receive
PopCap Bookwork free (check you My Games library) and you’ll be able to share your impressions with
EA via a temporary Feedback button. You’ll need Mac OS X 10.6.8 and an
Intel Core 2 Duo CPU or better to get going.
Joshua Gulick
Josh cut his teeth (and hands) on his first PC upgrade in 2000 and was instantly hooked on all things tech. He took a degree in English and tech writing with him to
Computer Power User Magazine and spent years reviewing high-end workstations and gaming systems, processors, motherboards, memory and video cards. His enthusiasm for PC hardware also made him a natural fit for covering the burgeoning modding community, and he wrote
CPU’s “Mad Reader Mod” cover stories from the series’ inception until becoming the publication editor for
Smart Computing Magazine. A few years ago, he returned to his first love, reviewing smoking-hot PCs and components, for
HotHardware. When he’s not agonizing over benchmark scores, Josh is either running (very slowly) or spending time with family.