Fanboys rejoice! It looks like Steam is finally joining the cult. Six media outlets were given teasers today, all of which came from Valve with some kind of Mac theme. There’s the heavy pictured at right in all his iPod glory. There was also an image of Gordon Freeman with a Mac logo on his chest and a little homage to my favorite Valve game, Portal.

As more consumers consider the Mac alternative to PCs, we’ll see a lot more of this. Gaming is extremely lucrative and publishers aren’t going to stand by and watch as a simple platform choice steals away potential customers. Steam for the Mac isn’t a world-shattering release, though. Will it be a nice choice for Mac users? Of course. But we’ll probably only see Valve titles in the immediate futures, and a lot of the smaller games that make Steam so great won’t make it over for several years, if ever.

This is a step in the right direction, though. Few things would please me as much as playing Portal 2 on my lappy during a flight.

Yes, the end of that title is “highlander.” That’s the new mode that made its way into the latest Team Fortress 2 update. The update also includes a bunch of bug fixes and some map edits.

For highlander mode each team can consist of up to 9 players. For each team there can only be one of each different class. I really like the idea. Part of the intrigue of the class system is feeling like you have a special role that others can’t quite perform as well. What better way to showcase it than making each player truly the only one.

Among the other changes is cloud support for key bindings and custom spray tags.

The Soldier/Demoman war is almost over for TF2 fans, which means we’re that much closer to getting the new weapons and achievements for those classes. The total frag count is over the 11 million mark, the two sides separated by just 14,792 kills.

In honor of the beginning of the end, Valve has revealed the new weapons. For Soldiers, it’s The Equalizer, a melee pickaxe that does more damage the more damage you’ve taken. As the little newspaper clipping says it, “Get close enough to death and you will become Death himself.” Cool.

The Demoman gets a new gun in the form of The Scottish Resistance. This new sticky launcher allows you to set more bombs, detonate enemy bombs, and set off your own bombs in clusters. The extra utility means the bombs do a little less damage, and the primer is longer – 0.4 seconds – so you’ll need some careful planning to make this thing work. It does turn the Demoman into one hell of a defensive tool, though.

Since removing the achievement-based item system, Valve has had about all the grief they can handle from unruly players. Where the old system led to players creating achievement servers just to unlock the goodies, the new system made prevalent the use of idling programs to attain the items.

Well Valve’s not happy with that second situation. They don’t want you idling your way to glory any more than they want you hacking, so they’re removing the items attained by idlers, and giving non-cheating types a little reward. If you didn’t idle your way to items, check for a level 1 Halo in your inventory. The headpiece gives you a level 1 “Aura of Incorruptibility”

As for future cheating, Valve’s Erik Johnson says they will “adopt a zero tolerance policy for external applications used to manipulate the persistent item system.” In other words, don’t do it.

Team Fortress 2 developer Robin Walker stopped by ShackNews to give a heads up on Valve’s new closed beta system for the popular shooter. The beta is meant to give Valve playtest feedback from some of the most competitive TF2 players in the world.

It’s not at all uncommon for global changes to affect a mass player base positively while doing what the hardcore players consider serious harm to a game. The most recent TF2 update, which changed item upgrades from “unlockables” to “random drops” was no exception to the rule. The casual players loved it, because they might actually be able to get The Sandman. Competitive players, though, were understandably pissed. All the work they put in just sort of went to waste (though honestly, with all the achievement servers I find it hard to be sympathetic – these guys would have been playing either way).

Valve wants to get an early look at some of that anger with their beta testing. By releasing casual features to the most hardcore players, they can determine what will work across the board and what still needs some tweaking. Overall, I’d call it a smart move. Feedback from the most competitive players is usually feedback from the base of folks that will be playing your game long after everyone else has moved on to Halo: Reach or Bioshock 2.