Origin, the much maligned digital distribution platform that EA introduced the year before last, has officially launched for the OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) and later. There's also a proviso requirement of a Core 2 DUO processor, but nothing more specific than that. Little known fact, because it's never been a relevant point before, I actually do most of my work related stuff on an old 1.1 model MacBook. So, naturally, this fell to me because I was the only one in a position to not only report on it, but comment on how it works too.

So I downloaded (which took only a few seconds, the DMG is just over 35mb) and installed it and had a bit of a shuftie. As I said, I have an old, very old, MacBook, with a 1.88Ghz Core 2 Duo, which handles it just fine. It's a little jittery scrolling down on some of the more busy pages, such as the catalogue pages, but it runs nice and smooth even for me. It even included my previously purchased games from the Windows side of things, though I don't have any that are Mac compatible at the moment (I only have Mass Effect 3 and The Old Republic in case you're wondering) it was still nice to see them there.

Speaking of Mac compatibility.There's currently a total 39 games available for the Mac platform. Though that's slightly inaccurate, as a large chunk of the 'games' are expansions for The Sims. Still, that's not a bad number to launch with, and includes both the Batman games, Dragon Age and several others that are generally considered fan favourites. Finding the Mac specific section was a little weird, because they placed it in the Genre's tab, rather than having a link from the main store page, but it does also open automatically on the Mac section when you load the application. I actually thought that was a pretty neat touch. It's a minor thing, sure, but shows that at least someone at EA had enough foresight to make things as convenient as possible.

Honestly, all the obligatory hating aside, I found Origin to be perfectly fine when I first started using it for Mass Effect 3 and have no reason to change my mind now that it's migrated to Mac too. Especially with the surprisingly altruistic choice to allow 'select' games to be made available on both Mac and PC with one purchase, rather than having to buy them twice. All in all, a functional, easily usable interface. Hater's gonna' hate, of course, but I see no reason to complain. In fact, I now see several things to be pleased about. Early days, but off to a good start. If you feel the need to fillet me with a rusty howitzer shell, feel free to join me in the comments to berate my for consorting with the enemy.