I feel that the real reason snow leopard is so fondly remembered is it was the final purely Mac version of Mac OS X. Starting with lion the focus shifted to bringing iOS-like features and design to Mac OS X.
Wasn't a lot of Snow Leopard an exercise in removing old cruft from the PowerPC architecture, and the last release to support 32-bit Intel machines? From my perspective at the time, it was really meant to set up Mac for the next decade or so, which it did brilliantly.
More dot releases fixed stuff and people grew used to its quirks (which there were many).
Note that the lull also lined up with the intense focus and high development pace Apple had on iOS in the early years. Ironically making the commentariat of the time ask if Apple had given up on the Mac.
I don’t necessarily agree with Jeff Johnson’s conclusion that major software upgrades are impossible on an annual schedule. I also don’t know what he’s looking for, as someone who worked at Apple during this time quality improved substantially in 10.6 Snow Leopard and continued. Most bug fixes don’t get a marketing line item or even much fanfare. We were all users of what the OSX guys were doing and lived on the dogfood while we made our own mistakes on iOS.
As I age I realize you need to entice the user with more value and service - anew features. It cannot just be quality, but quality is table stakes and the minimum expectation. When things get out of hand organizationally it makes sense to call for a snow leopard, but it comes at great cost so you better make big changes in the system so the same mistakes are not repeated.
> I don’t necessarily agree with Jeff Johnson’s conclusion that major software upgrades are impossible on an annual schedule.
Snow Leopard was a refinement of Leopard, and both releases had unusually long durations as the newest release of Mac OS X, totaling 4 years. It then continued getting security updates until late 2013. I can see how people would treat the later point releases of Snow Leopard as a high point for stability because of the years of bug fixes that had gone into the system by then.
> As I age I realize you need to entice the user with more value and service - anew features. It cannot just be quality, but quality is table stakes and the minimum expectation.
I don't know anybody who's switched to Mac because of a feature they added in the latest OS release. It's always because of the better price-performance, the better battery life, or because Windows got too glitchy and annoying. The only new Mac OS feature from the past few years that I can even name off the top of my head is when they finally added window snapping with Sequoia.
There’s red flags I look for in articles like this, and a FreeBSD partition on your MacBook Pro is one of them. Tells me the author is probably hypercritical of MacOS because it’s not a GPL OS. That’s fine, but as someone who likes MacOS, I don’t share the pessimism.
Snow Leopard was a great experience for me. So much more stable, and the OS felt tighter, like lots of the little wonky things got sorted out. It well deserves its credit and more operating systems should focus on bug fix releases once in a while.
> I don’t necessarily agree with Jeff Johnson’s conclusion that major software upgrades are impossible on an annual schedule.
I'm not sure this is a good place to debate my article when the author of the submitted article merely linked to mine.
It appears that Ruben Schade downgraded to 10.5 from 10.6.2, which was still pretty early in the Snow Leopard cycle, then "tried it again a few months later" and downgraded again, until 10.7 Lion (which I personally hated and skipped on my main Mac). Thus, Schade never experienced the later versions of Snow Leopard that everyone remembers fondly.
As I recall, there were plenty of legitimate user gripes when the very first iteration of Snow Leopard (10.6.0) was released. But by the time of the very last point-release (10.6.11?), the OS was rock-solid. It was only after all the initial bugs were ironed out, that Snow Leopard achieved the legendary status that it has enjoyed ever since. The blogger doesn’t take this factor into account.
YMMV. I ran Snow Leopard on a couple of machines for years—bought it off CraigsList for $10, handed off in Times Square—and it was far and away the best OSX experience I had, and, at least in my experience, the best/smoothest/most stable until El Capitan, 10.11. And yes, maybe I'm thinking of 10.6.8, but I don't see why that's a problem.
>People invoke its memory because they’re broadly craving stability and quality of life improvements, something almost everyone has wilfully discarded as they chase the next rung of enshittification.
I feel that the real reason snow leopard is so fondly remembered is it was the final purely Mac version of Mac OS X. Starting with lion the focus shifted to bringing iOS-like features and design to Mac OS X.
Wasn't a lot of Snow Leopard an exercise in removing old cruft from the PowerPC architecture, and the last release to support 32-bit Intel machines? From my perspective at the time, it was really meant to set up Mac for the next decade or so, which it did brilliantly.
Snow Leopard wasn't significantly any better or worse than other Mac OS versions of the time. It was just around for longer, after Leopard which was also around for longer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Timeline_of_Mac_opera...
More dot releases fixed stuff and people grew used to its quirks (which there were many).
Note that the lull also lined up with the intense focus and high development pace Apple had on iOS in the early years. Ironically making the commentariat of the time ask if Apple had given up on the Mac.
I don’t necessarily agree with Jeff Johnson’s conclusion that major software upgrades are impossible on an annual schedule. I also don’t know what he’s looking for, as someone who worked at Apple during this time quality improved substantially in 10.6 Snow Leopard and continued. Most bug fixes don’t get a marketing line item or even much fanfare. We were all users of what the OSX guys were doing and lived on the dogfood while we made our own mistakes on iOS.
As I age I realize you need to entice the user with more value and service - anew features. It cannot just be quality, but quality is table stakes and the minimum expectation. When things get out of hand organizationally it makes sense to call for a snow leopard, but it comes at great cost so you better make big changes in the system so the same mistakes are not repeated.
> I don’t necessarily agree with Jeff Johnson’s conclusion that major software upgrades are impossible on an annual schedule.
Snow Leopard was a refinement of Leopard, and both releases had unusually long durations as the newest release of Mac OS X, totaling 4 years. It then continued getting security updates until late 2013. I can see how people would treat the later point releases of Snow Leopard as a high point for stability because of the years of bug fixes that had gone into the system by then.
> As I age I realize you need to entice the user with more value and service - anew features. It cannot just be quality, but quality is table stakes and the minimum expectation.
I don't know anybody who's switched to Mac because of a feature they added in the latest OS release. It's always because of the better price-performance, the better battery life, or because Windows got too glitchy and annoying. The only new Mac OS feature from the past few years that I can even name off the top of my head is when they finally added window snapping with Sequoia.
There’s red flags I look for in articles like this, and a FreeBSD partition on your MacBook Pro is one of them. Tells me the author is probably hypercritical of MacOS because it’s not a GPL OS. That’s fine, but as someone who likes MacOS, I don’t share the pessimism.
Snow Leopard was a great experience for me. So much more stable, and the OS felt tighter, like lots of the little wonky things got sorted out. It well deserves its credit and more operating systems should focus on bug fix releases once in a while.
FreeBSD is definitely not a "GPL OS", the license is right in the name!
FreeBSD is not a GPL OS either.
> I don’t necessarily agree with Jeff Johnson’s conclusion that major software upgrades are impossible on an annual schedule.
I'm not sure this is a good place to debate my article when the author of the submitted article merely linked to mine.
It appears that Ruben Schade downgraded to 10.5 from 10.6.2, which was still pretty early in the Snow Leopard cycle, then "tried it again a few months later" and downgraded again, until 10.7 Lion (which I personally hated and skipped on my main Mac). Thus, Schade never experienced the later versions of Snow Leopard that everyone remembers fondly.
As I recall, there were plenty of legitimate user gripes when the very first iteration of Snow Leopard (10.6.0) was released. But by the time of the very last point-release (10.6.11?), the OS was rock-solid. It was only after all the initial bugs were ironed out, that Snow Leopard achieved the legendary status that it has enjoyed ever since. The blogger doesn’t take this factor into account.
Why write working software once, when you can make an entire career out of constantly refactoring a new broken mess?
I have great memories of Snow Leopard. It even gave you back a few GB of storage (IIRC) at a time when every GB really counted.
Apple still sells 256gb disks, I'd say every GB still matters.
YMMV. I ran Snow Leopard on a couple of machines for years—bought it off CraigsList for $10, handed off in Times Square—and it was far and away the best OSX experience I had, and, at least in my experience, the best/smoothest/most stable until El Capitan, 10.11. And yes, maybe I'm thinking of 10.6.8, but I don't see why that's a problem.
The myth part, is of course, a myth, and good marketing. Snow Leopard was super important for the OS, changing a ton: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Snow_Leopard#New_or_c...>. Marketing gonna market.
Regardless, I can agree with this:
>People invoke its memory because they’re broadly craving stability and quality of life improvements, something almost everyone has wilfully discarded as they chase the next rung of enshittification.