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This system has a special place in my heart, because it was the first version of macOS I ever used.

My first Mac, a 2010 13” MacBook Pro unibody, came with Snow Leopard out of the box.

Now, if you don’t mind, I’m gonna take a seat to read all those comments about how smooth, stable and efficient it was.

Truth is, it was quite… snappy.
 
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We are in desperate need a of version of macOS with "0 new features." Snow Leopard was the greatest OS of all time in terms of stability and reliability. The fact that Tim Cook doesn't recognize the value of that speaks to how utterly clueless and mediocre he is. Cook lopsidedly focuses on maximizing profits instead of providing customers with the most user-friendly software and hardware. He cares more about shareholders than customers. For customers: What a useless man Cook is! Scott Forstall is one of the key people responsible for Snow Leopard being so excellent. Clueless Cook was so mediocre that he fired Forstall and didn't recognize Forstall's value. No wonder we haven't had another Snow Leopard!
 
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The initial release (10.6) had some pretty significant problems- breaking Adobe apps.
But by 10.6.8, it was all done and rock solid, and quite frankly, a masterpiece.
I still think it’s the best OS they ever made. I still have it as a dual boot option on a partition on my old 2011 Mac mini (though don’t use it anymore because the industry abandoned it).
 
I still have that Tshirt they gave out during the in store launch!
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Sadly I do not have the CD anymore
 


Today marks the 15th anniversary of Apple releasing Mac OS X Snow Leopard, which became available to purchase for $29 on August 28, 2009.

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After advertising Mac OS X Leopard as having "over 300 new features" in 2007, Apple previewed Snow Leopard at WWDC 2008. Notably, during that year's "State of the Union" session, Apple showed a presentation slide that said the update had "0 new features," as Apple opted to focus on under-the-hood performance and stability improvements.

"We've built on the success of Leopard and created an even better experience for our users from installation to shutdown," said Apple's former software engineering chief Bertrand Serlet. "Apple engineers have made hundreds of improvements so with Snow Leopard your system is going to feel faster, more responsive and even more reliable than before."

With Snow Leopard, Apple said it refined 90% of the foundational "projects" that were built into Mac OS X. Apple pitched the update as offering a more responsive Finder app, an improved Mail app that loads emails up to twice as fast as before, up to 80% faster Time Machine backups, and a 64-bit version of Safari that was up to 50% faster than the previous version. Snow Leopard also took up around half as much disk space as Leopard.

You can watch Serlet speak more about Snow Leopard at WWDC 2009 below.



Article Link: Mac OS X Snow Leopard Launched 15 Years Ago Today With '0 New Features'
Those were the days … when we did not have to search System Preferences to find the setting we needed to change …
 
I didn’t get my first Mac until 2012 so I never used Snow Leopard, but I upgraded from an i7 Intel MacBook Pro to an M3 Pro MacBook Pro a couple months ago, and that’s what I imagine upgrading to Snow Leopard felt like.
 
Snow Leopard also took up around half as much disk space as Leopard.

That’s because they removed unused hardware drivers from the installation, if I recall correctly.
 
This system has a special place in my heart, because it was the first version of macOS I ever used.

My first Mac, a 2010 13” MacBook Pro unibody, the last Mac with an Nvidia graphics card ever (the 320M), came with Snow Leopard out of the box.

Now, if you don’t mind, I’m gonna take a seat to read all those comments about how smooth, stable and efficient it was.

Truth is, it was quite… snappy.

Apple was shipping Macs with Nvidia GPUs until 2015, including laptops.

If you meant Nvidia chipset, sure, but that was everyone post Core 2.
 
Apple was shipping Macs with Nvidia GPUs until 2015, including laptops.

If you meant Nvidia chipset, sure, but that was everyone post Core 2.
Yeah, I stand corrected. Maybe the last integrated Nvidia graphics but yeah, I’m checking and other Macs kept using Nvidia dedicated GPUs for a few more years.

I’m gonna edit my message to avoid more replies correcting my mistake.
 
It wouldn’t be popular, but one of these days I want Apple to release an iOS version with “0 new features”. Just going into overdrive on debugging and fine tuning.
The increase in lag across the system (but mostly Safari and Messages) from iOS 14/15ish to iOS 17 is quite unfortunate. It shouldn't take 5 seconds of my messages app not responding to user input and getting reset back to the contacts list.

At least I've been sticking with macOS 12 for a while, it's decently stable.
 
Aye. Remove the bloat, tighten up the code--make it so that the 8GB MBP runs smoothly without thrashing the SSD.;)
I think a good moment for such type of release could be the first Apple Silicon-only release, getting rid of all the old x86 code. Although I’m not sure if that’s needed for Rossetta 2.0 to work…

Anyway, knowing Apple, I doubt so.
 
I started with Leopard on a G5 iMac and not long after ran SL on a mid-2009 MBP (that I still use). Still have the original packaging, SL install CD's and a cloned HDD. Come to think of it it might even be the original 320 GB 7200 spinner. Really loved that iteration of OS X and the iLife Suite back then due to being so polished with no subjective bloat.

Correction: I think my 2006 G5 iMac originally came with Tiger ?!
 
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