“Apple on Tuesday made it clear that it will no longer patch OS X 10.6, aka Snow Leopard, when it again declined to offer a security update for the four-and-a-half-year-old operating system,” Gregg Keizer reports for Computerworld.
“As Apple issued an update for Mavericks, or OS X 10.9, as well as for its two predecessors, Mountain Lion (10.8) and Lion (10.7), Apple had nothing for Snow Leopard or its owners yesterday,” Keizer reports. “Snow Leopard was also ignored in December, when Apple patched Safari 6 and 7 for newer editions of OS X, but did not update Safari 5.1.10, the most-current Apple browser for the OS. Apple delivered the final security update for Snow Leopard in September 2013.”
“Traditionally, Apple has patched only the OS X editions designated as ‘n’ and ‘n-1’ — where ‘n’ is the newest — and discarded support for ‘n-2’ either before the launch of ‘n’ or immediately after. Under that plan, Snow Leopard was ‘n-2’ when Mountain Lion shipped in mid-2012, and by rights should have been retired around then,” Keizer reports. “But it wasn’t. Instead, Apple continued to ship security updates for Snow Leopard, and with Tuesday’s patches of Mountain Lion and Lion Tuesday, it now seems plain that Apple has shifted to supporting ‘n-2’ as well as ‘n’ and ‘n-1.’ (In that scenario, Mavericks is now ‘n,’ Mountain Lion is ‘n-1’ and Lion is ‘n-2’)… With Snow Leopard’s retirement, 1 in 5 Macs are running an operating system that could be compromised because of unpatched vulnerabilities.”
“Snow Leopard was the last version of OS X able to run applications designed for the PowerPC processor, the Apple/IBM/Motorola-crafted CPU used by Apple before it switched to Intel in 2006,” Keizer reports. “Snow Leopard, while requiring a Mac with an Intel processor, was the latest edition able to run the Rosetta translation utility, and thus launch PowerPC software.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Nothing lasts forever.
Apple will not be stuck in a rut like Windows supporting 12 year old systems. Move forward to the present, not keep in the past. 10.6 had its time were now 3 OS’s higher and it is time to move on.
I read somewhere that 10.6.8 was not vulnerable to the gotofail flaw. Anyone else read the same? In any case going forward, SnowL is one less cat Apple will support.
Haven’t read it, but pointed it all out to my wife, who uses a 10.6.8 machine at school. She tested at gotofail.com with Safari and it said she was fine.
Windows NT was abandoned by Microsoft. Guess what, no one went after NT. XP was too big and too easy a target to bother with NT.
Snow Leopard won’t be targeted either.
Snow Leopard and Safari didn’t/don’t suffer from the goto bug.
Snow Leopard was not updated because it was not vulnerable.
You can prove anything with facts. Tech writers prefer to rely on instincts, and blind prejudice.
What? They all hate Apple? Stupid unless they say something positive about Apple? Then they’re geniuses?
…and FUD checks in the mail!
Snow Leopard was the apex of OS X. Bertrand took his leave of Apple and has moved on- those behind him have yet to fill his shows.
correcto mundo.
+1
I run Mavericks but would go back to Snow Leopard in a second, it was the best OS X by far. The Finder was much more useful then, and snappier too.
Rarely access the Finder window.
Path Finder is so much more versatile. Takes awhile to understand your options you want and get in the groove, but it facilitates quick file work.
I’m also running Path Finder. Far superior to Finder.
Worth every every penny, can’t recommend it enough.
I have a sweet setup that lets me see full sized images and I have the Sidebar, Recents, Trash, Size and Preview enabled in the left and right drawers.
..left out in the snow.
Anyone use PureBasic ?
There was a company that did a BASIC to C converter called FutureBasic , but it only works on carbon.
To me, that’s one of the coolest ideas out there.
Write in BASIC, use a BASIC to C converter, and it works like…
you wrote it in C, in the first place.
Is there an App like that for Mavericks, or has anyone used PureBasic?
I think you’re at the wrong blog.
The chances of upgrading my 10.6 iMac to newer OS are slim at best.
Easier and low $s to just buy an “older” Mac on eBay that already has Lion or Mountain Lion on it for a fraction of new price.
What hyperbolical bullshit.
– Snow Leopard was updated 5 months ago. That’s still an extremely recent for out-of-date OS. It could still be getting once a year updates, which would be more than suffecient.
– What vulnerability would they be patching anyway? That big “gotofail” flaw never affected Snow Leopard. They need to give at least one specific, real example of something left unpatched for the premise of this article to make any sense.
Poorly crafted headline MDN.