Steam and Mac OSX

So I just want to download a demo of Portal so I can see what the fuss is about. However, this is no longer allowed. Instead I have to download something called Steam. I have heard about Steam and apparently it is the evolution of gaming.

So I download it. Great. It then has to download updates before I use it. Okay, fair enough, go ahead. Except for the part where it keeps losing the connection with the server and just stops. Thanks for that. Eventually I get it up and running.

I eventually find the Portal demo and start downloading it. Finally, Portal is downloaded and I start it up. Steam then manages to crash my entire Mac (which is not an easy thing to do). Now, I try start it and every time I try play it, it tries to verify the game files and then cuts out because the servers are busy.

So, either I am doing something terribly wrong, Mac OSX + Steam just doesn't work, or the future of gaming is going to be really horrible. Please let me know which it is.

You are doing something horribly wrong, though I can't imagine what. I've got no problems using Steam to feed my Civ4 addiction on Snow Leopard. Perhaps you're running something incompatible in the background?

Sounds like it's just the servers being under heavy load

Nothing server-side would cause SL to crash. Cause Steam to crash, yes, but not the whole OS.

EDIT: Good God, man, you're not still running Tiger, are you?

Would Steam even work on a PPC-based version of OS X?