I try not to be negative all the time. On this blog I try for a ratio of something like 60% negativity, 30% nerdiness, 10% erotic Bratz fanfiction.¹ And I’ve already harped on the deficiencies of Steam for Mac. But I’ve just had one of the most astoundingly bad software experiences I can remember, so indulge me.

I decided to terminate some unneeded applications to free up memory on my MacBook Pro. Steam was running, hidden, so I right-clicked its Dock icon and chose Quit. But I had forgotten that Loom was also running, its window also hidden.

Apparently it’s a no-no to quit Steam while a game is running. But it also turns out that Steam is unprepared for the possibility that it might receive a Quit command while in the background. Here’s what happened next:

1. Steam un-hid itself and (I soon discovered) displayed a modal alert reminding me to exit Loom first.
2. However, Steam failed to come to the foreground so I could see or click that alert.
3. Clicking on the piece of the Steam window that was peeking out from behind other windows failed to bring Steam to the front, presumably because the modal alert was blocking all other clicks on Steam’s UI.
4. Meanwhile, Steam began playing a chime — not the beep that I had selected in my system preferences, but its own alert sound — continuously and at full volume.
5. I finally moved the other windows out of the way and found the modal alert, but its OK button wouldn’t respond to clicks.
6. Neither would Loom.
7. Steam crashed.

Awesome, right? There’s more. I quit Loom manually, then relaunched Steam just to make sure everything was OK. But since Steam had crashed, it wasn’t running when I quit Loom, so it thought Loom was still running. From then on, whenever I tried to launch a game — any game — it would instead show the alert pictured above.

Rebooting fixed it. But that’s an unacceptable solution. Normal interaction should never cause good software to destabilize itself to the point of requiring a reboot.

It’s clear by this point that Steam is not good software. Until today, I had put up with its problems because Valve’s games were so worthwhile. But I think this experience has crossed a line with me, and now I feel like a fool for ever supporting them.