“Apple is selling Snow Leopard on its online store again. The software, which many Mac users discovered that they required following their recent upgrade to iOS 6, costs £14,” Karen Haslam reports for Macworld UK.
“Snow Leopard was pulled from Apple’s site after Mountain Lion was launched earlier this year, however, following the launch of iOS 6 in September it emerged that iOS 6 required iTunes 10.6, which required Snow Leopard,” Haslam reports. “As we wrote at the time iOS 6 launched, users were finding that having updated their iPhone or iPad to iOS 6 their device was rendered incompatible with the version of iTunes they were running on their Mac, and in some cases it was impossible to upgrade their Mac to a version of iTunes that was compatible because they were running a OS that predated Snow Leopard.”
Haslam reports, “Purchasing a copy of Snow Leopard is the only option for owners of older Macs that wish to update to the latest version of iTunes, required since the iOS 6 update.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Catch-22 eliminated!
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Situation: 74yr old grandmother with 6yr old iMac on Tiger, still using it (by virtue of the excellent Universal Access tools, despite her advanced Macular Degeneration). She has a 5yr old iPod Nano which Is subject to the battery recall. I visit and organise the iPod replacement and Apple, very efficiently, replace it with a brand new Nano. But she cannot install it and she has to wait for my next visit. The new Nano requires iTunes 10.6 which is not supported on Tiger. I contact Apple and they advise an upgrade to Snow Leopard is required. But her iMac must first be upgraded with more memory. I order the memory from the net and it arrives the next morning so i install it and call Apple back to order Snow Leopard, since it is not available from the store. I persuade Apple to supply the CD gratis – they were very good about that. However the upgrade fails, necessitating another trip with a spare hard drive to back up her photos and itunes library followed by a complete disc wipe and fresh OS install. Eventually everything now works again, and Snow Leopard is not so different to be confusing for her, with her limited vision, and she loves her new clip-on Nano. Moral of the story: Apple failed to think through the impact of swapping out the Nano with the latest model, but their support (free) and speedy supply of Snow Leopard (also free) solved the problem. I was particularly imoressed by the attitude of the senior support guy who arranged the free CD. He kept me on the line while he found out who could approve the free CD and made the necessary calls, and the CD arrived a few days later. I was also impressed with the assistance from another support guy when i was trying to resolve the problems with the Tiger to Snow Leopard upgrade. Despite the oversight by the iPod replacement program people, I could not fault the Apple support team. With 30 years in IT I can say, with confidence, that Apple offers by far the best support in the industry, and they are WAY above everyone else.
I’m glad Apple took care of you. That says a lot about Apple.
Congratulations, on being so cheap.
Snow Leopard For The Win!!
Best damn version of os x ever.
Agreed!
You bet it is! Unfortunately, us Pro users have been pushed down a few levels of importance since Lion and Mountain Lion. Sigh…
Dittos
I agree. Still using Snow Leopard on my 2007 Mac Pro and like it a lot. OS upgrades don’t seem as important as they used to be. I wish Apple would keep the current and two previous OS’s for sale in the Mac Apple Store. So where’s Lion…?
$19.99. $9 less than the original $29 price. 🙂
And much less than what used copies WERE (still are actually) going for on eBay…
Finally.
Apple dropped the ball big time on all this.
I have been locked out of iTunes on my Mac Mini/iPod Touch for a year with this issue. And Apple Support was not helpful in the least, they couldn’t have cared less. Then to add insult to injury, with an old inherited Winblows laptop that ran XP of the same OS generation as Tiger, I could run iTunes and get my iPod Touch to work….
Say what???
Windoze works, but a 2 decades loyal Apple customer couldn’t get Apple systems to work together, or access the software update that would work. And not because the software doesn’t exist, but because they just pulled it and said you can’t have it.
Tossers!!! 🙁
How many loyal Apple customers did they have to cut off and piss off, before they reversed themselves. Seems they have been doing a lot of that lately.
Last time I needed Snow Leopard (to upgrade the son’s Macbook software) I asked a local Apple repair/dealer if I could borrow a DVD. Easy!
A spleen recision might be the go
Dr Enz
Ya I love how apple supports much older versions of windows os than it does of it’s own :/
Because a typical Windows user does not upgrade their OS, unless they buy a new PC, and they don’t buy a new PC unless the old one falls apart at the seams…
“Because a typical Windows user does not upgrade their OS…”
Which begs the question, “Who’s really smarter? The Mac user or the Windows user?”
Well, Apple provides upgrades that customers actually want, and makes it relatively painless and inexpensive to do the upgrade. For Windows users, it’s an expensive hassle that they don’t even want. So, for a Windows user, it’s probably “smart” NOT to upgrade unless they have to, which goes back to the original point of why Apple still (must) supports Windows XP for iTunes.
But who’s smarter…? Obviously, Mac users, because they use a Mac. 🙂
Bought wife iPad mini and would not work with 10.5.8
Had to upgrade to 10.6.8. Discovered this a couple days ago. I had no idea it was not available on the Apple Store till I read this article. I had found it and ordered it. Glad to hear it is similar to Tiger as wife would have a fit if it was significantly different.
To continue and to be more to the point, the iPad mini came without the personalized message. Apple was so kind about the oversight (or the possibility that I threw it out) they gave me some credit. Way more than I expected. Wow! Apple did not have to do that for me.
To be clear, the real complaint was I was expecting the personalized message on a medium appropriate to give the wife with the iPad mini. I was not expecting the very intimate and personal message to be printed on a PACKING LIST. I think the support guy understood and was sympathetic. The truth of the matter is I did not see a packing list nor a personalized message in the box and then learned from the support guy that the message would have been on the packing list. I was quite surprised Apple would do it on a packing list and the support guy agreed.
Apple customer support #1+
Wow apple supports windows xp with the new itunes but drops support for their own computers of the same age. only apple
That’s a negative point for the Windows world, because so MANY Windows users are STILL using Windows XP. iTunes still supports Windows XP, because a high percentage of Windows users are still using XP.
I don’t see that as a negative at all. If they found an operating system they like why not use it, why switch to a more clumsy one?
Yes, for a Windows user, I’d certainly have to agree with that point. Each successive version of Windows DOES seem to be “more clumsy.” This is especially true for the Windows 8 kludge-fest.
Also, it is a often a big pain to upgrade an existing PC with Windows, especially if it’s still running Windows XP. And the upgrade is relatively expensive, not $20 like for Mac OS X.
So, FOR A WINDOWS USER, it’s probably better NOT to upgrade unless they have to, which goes back to the original point of why Apple still (must) supports Windows XP for iTunes.
Snow Leopard has been available for purchase at the $20 price with a call to 1.800.MY.APPLE since the day they took it off the website.
You’re trying too hard.
No, not eliminated. By requiring an iTunes that does not run on Apple’s G5 computers (more than powerful enough to handle syncing to iPhones) many of us are still stuck.
Yes, our laptops are all newer, but the family’s desktop used to handle iTunes and iPhone/iPod syncing now needs to be replaced for no reason. I don’t mind using an older iTunes, but now I can’t.
Now if I were using an older Windows computer, there wouldn’t be any problem.
Does anyone know if this disc is 10.6.3 or 10.6.8 disc?
I don’t think there was a 10.6.8 RETAIL installation disc. I think the latest version on a Snow Leopard retail disc is for 10.6.3.
Software Update will install that latest available version, which is 10.6.8 (v1.1), so it doesn’t really matter. The only time it would matter is if your Mac happens to be a model that originally came with a version of Mac OS X 10.6 that is later than 10.6.3. In other words, the OEM disc included with the Mac is for 10.6.4 or later. Then a 10.6.3 installation disc would (usually) not work, because it is earlier than the pre-installed version of Mac OS X for that Mac.
I’m having a similar problem with my mother-in-law’s machine. She has one of my old G5s running 10.4.x. When I gave her my old iPad 1, we discovered she could not use it on that machine. It requires 10.6 or later, but her G5 can only be upgraded to 10.5, which we don’t have anyway. Bottom line, she needs a new machine to use an iOS device. Which really sucks as I was hoping she could migrate to an iPad and mostly stop using her computer.
I’d still be using Snow Leopard on my MacPro if I hadn’t needed software that wouldn’t work on it, so had to upgrade to Lion. I don’t WANT my desktop machine to look like my iPad. I don’t like the OS X dock, never mind Launchpad. Ever since the day I discovered Now Utilities (later Action Utilities) I have preferred to open (or switch to) another application with my own short-cuts (e.g., control-p for Photoshop. It saves time and is a lot quicker than pressing command-tab, especially if I have nearly a dozen applications open.