14 DAY TRIAL // Valve has upgraded the stable branch of the Steam client and a version of the application has been released. There aren't too many new features in this cycle, but some of the issues that have been corrected are pretty important.
Valve releases Steam updates all the time, usually after a long and busy development cycle full of intermediary Beta versions. The same happened with this version and it looks like a lot of changes have gathered in the interim. Unfortunately, if you're looking for something special in this version, you won't find anything of a kind. It's more like a maintenance release than anything else.
To be fair, it's been awhile since we last had some major features implemented in the Steam client, but Valve must be focusing its efforts in other direction, like SteamOS or the Steam Machines launch that is scheduled for November. It's not a bad thing, and Steam doesn't really need all that much anyway.
What's new in the latest Steam version
According to the changelog, Market, game hubs, workshop, and inventory are now available natively in Big Picture mode, holding down the Guide button on a game controller for more than a second jumps you right to the Exit menu in Big Picture, the Friends interface has been updated to make more options natively available, and the downloads page now shows disk usage as MB/sec.
Also, showing launch option for additional DLC before content finished installing is now working as it should, a custom video player for watching streaming videos has been added, the playback in Big Picture mode now supports a controller, minimizing game window when live broadcast starts has been fixed, the friends UI performance with very large friends lists has been refined, and a few other fixes have been implemented.
You can download the Steam client from Softpedia. Please keep in mind that this is an official installer and now the entire client.