Mac OS X Snow Leopard Launched 15 Years Ago Today With '0 New Features'

[Baklava]

Certainly the best OS I've ever used in my lifetime.

 

[Fluffyk]

and oh god, do i miss steve

I miss Steve so much. He truly was the soul of Apple. I always wonder how different would Apple be if he was still here.

 

[Fluffyk]

That would take the kind of “courage” Apple isn’t interested in.

They’ve done maintenance releases a few times since Steve died. But it never delievered. The problem is that Apple should fix lot of things in design, ease of use and juice up the whole user experience. I personally don’t want Apple to just fix and polish their stuff. They need to bring new and exciting ideas.

 

[Tyler O'Bannon]

That was a day one purchase for me and it did run better. I had the first and only aluminum MacBook (not Pro) released in November 2008. Snow Leopard definitely made that machine run better. I think around that time I put 4GB of RAM in it, up from 2GB when purchased. That machine definitely ran better and lasted me seven years in total.

 

[mac9650]

I remembered how much faster my iMac Core 2 Duo was after Snow Leopard, it was great!

 

[mlayer]

Snow Leopard is my go-to for 2004-2009 Macs because it's good on both PPC & Intel. I installed it over the weekend on an iBook G4 I had in storage. Still great.

 

[TalkieToaster]

That was the best release they ever had.

 

[coolkid93]

Probably the best OS ever made

 

[daabido]

Paws down the best OS X ever. Tiger is a distant second. How did the rest rate?

 

[Mrkevinfinnerty]

Tim should call this out when he announces the iPhone 16 with zero new features

 

[Shirasaki]

You can set this up in MacOS to require approval. I have mine automatically download but it doesn’t get installed until I’m ready and approve. On iOS it pops up every once in a while asking for permission but nothing has gotten installed without my approval there either.

Would be great to be able to turn off software update entirely. In Windows 10, a group policy can hide the entire Windows Update interface, which is amazing for people who don’t want to update their machine.

 

[thecautioners]

Still marched my disposable income laden 23 year old behind to the Apple Store to get the disk and install it on my black MacBook.

 

[TigerNike23]

Still wish they did Safari for Windows…

 

[Flood4]

He talked about AI in this keynote!! 15 years ago!!

 

[germinator]

Ah, back in the days when Apple was innovating, the OS team was firing on all cylinders under a COMPUTER SCIENTIST (not the current clown), major OS upgrades came when they were ready, and every major release was a massive improvement.

How low have we come!

 

[HVDynamo]

Apple could do the same when the first macOS that drops support for x86 chips launches.

I honestly wish they would do this every other year. There just isn't enough real new stuff to justify new OS's every year in my opinion. They should alternate new features and refinement each year, and support the refined version longer/never end machine support on a new feature release, but on a refined release. basically, I'd like them to have an LTS version of the OS every 2-3 years. Now the cycle is so damn fast they never completely fix bugs in one OS before they ship a new buggy one. Granted I haven't had too terrible bugs lately. But I've had weird WiFi issues off and on, and my backgrounds don't like to adjust day to night properly in Sonoma like they used to before.

 

[BGPL]

Wasn't this "the worlds most advanced 64-bit operating system" that shipped with 64-bit mode disabled??

 

[HVDynamo]

I still think Snow Leopard was my most favorite version of OS X (macOS). I have fond memories of it for some reason. Specifically, I really loved how Mission Control worked with the third mouse button. I was able to quickly navigate between programs with ease and speed. I forget right now what came after SL, but they changed how Mission Control worked and I was sorely disappointed.

Mission Control was introduced in OS X Lion (10.7)

 

[Alex Cai]

All current Apple OS desperately need this kind of update

 

[Mrjoedot]

Still wish they did Safari for Windows…

they did, but didn't seem to last long

 

[JippaLippa]

Ah, my first macOS experience :')

(Might have seen macOS earlier, but Snow Leopard was the first I used on a daily basis).

 

[verniesgarden]

I can’t remember if there was a USB option but I got a disc. Maybe Lion was the one with USB?

I think you are right.

 

[verniesgarden]

…as we’re 10.11 El Capitan and 10.13 High Sierra - both of which I preferred over their predecessors.

10.14 Mojave was a farewell to this era, the „Intel“ era of the Macintosh.
10.15 Catalina was a transitional release (breaking many 32-bit apps and drivers), as was 11 Big Sure - both not great.

After that, it just becomes a big blur for me.

I feel like OSes are the eventful things they were back in the "big cat" era, the all seem to have their own personalities.

 

[bzgnyc2]

Snow Leopard is my go-to for 2004-2009 Macs because it's good on both PPC & Intel. I installed it over the weekend on an iBook G4 I had in storage. Still great.

Are you sure you have the right OS? Snow Leopard dropped support for PPC processors. It still ran their binaries via Rosetta. Perhaps you are thinking of Tiger (10.4) or Leopard (10.5)?

 

[bzgnyc2]

Wasn't this "the worlds most advanced 64-bit operating system" that shipped with 64-bit mode disabled??

Maybe you are thinking of Tiger (10.4)? Much of Snow Leopard (10.6) was rewritten for 64-bit. Tiger had some support for 64-bit but practically it was not practical.