
Apple retires Snow Leopard from support, leaves 1 in 5 Macs vulnerable - esemiss
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9246609/Apple_retires_Snow_Leopard_from_support_leaves_1_in_5_Macs_vulnerable_to_attacks
======
Watabou
> 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.

Well, The SSL bug only affected Mavericks. Additionally, I don't think we know
if the security updates released for mountain lion and lion also affected Snow
Leopard. And if it did, well, Apple moves quicker than Microsoft does anyway
with new OS release every year.

If there are still people running Snow Leopard, either they have an old
computer that is more than 5 years old, or they specifically don't want to
upgrade to Lion. For the former, Apple knows most people will have upgraded
their old computers by now, or will soon in the future. For the latter group,
most know what they're doing by not upgrading.

Snow Leopard is 4 years old. And the last update for it was September 2013,
just 5 months ago. It clearly was Apple's XP, if you will, and the longest
supported out of all releases, I think.

~~~
interstitial
My $2700 Cintiq is 7 years old and works dandy, but Wacom will not be making
Maverick drivers -- ever. So I won't be upgrading ever. My TV is 10 years old
and working. We have a 15 year old TV in the office. My 2001 ibook is going
strong and my six year could use it -- but it can't even be updated to the new
wireless networking protocols, and linux abandoned the G3.

~~~
jader201
I can't tell if you're complaining about Apple abandoning support for Snow
Leopard, or just making a statement supporting why people still stick to
old(er) hardware.

If the latter, then I completely understand, and you make a valid point.

If the former, though, then my question would be why would one be content with
sticking to old(er) hardware, but not be content with sticking to old(er)
software?

Again, not saying you fall into that boat, but in general, anybody protesting
this decision should be asked that question.

And it's a genuine question -- maybe there is a valid reason. I just can't
think of one.

~~~
teacup50
> _If the former, though, then my question would be why would one be content
> with sticking to old(er) hardware, but not be content with sticking to
> old(er) software?_

Security, and network effects.

Supporting deployment back to 10.6 / iOS 6 / etc isn't inherently difficult,
but the fast pace of Apple's deployment, the lack of support for downgrading
on iOS devices, and the now-constant API churn makes it seem like more hassle
than it's worth.

Apple is intentionally driving new demand by pushing early obsolescence of old
software and hardware.

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doomlaser
Snow Leopard was the high watermark release for OS X, before focus and
engineering talent migrated to iOS, and successive releases of OS X began to
become cluttered with throwaway useless user interface candy and naggy
GateKeeper dialogs.

~~~
eropple
YMMV, but a lot of that "useless user interface candy" makes my day noticeably
better. Launchpad is silly, but Mission Control pretty much changed how I used
a computer. I'd been using Macs since 10.4, but I didn't _get_ Macs until
Lion. And 10.9 made multi-monitor much much better by making Mission Control
desktops per-monitor. This is the best OS X release by far.

As far as Gatekeeper dialogs go, I'm curious what you're doing with your
machine because I have seen a Gatekeeper complaint exactly once, because Cisco
hadn't signed their VPN software (which was really awesome of them).

~~~
teacup50
> _Launchpad is silly, but Mission Control pretty much changed how I used a
> computer. I 'd been using Macs since 10.4, but I didn't get Macs until Lion.
> And 10.9 made multi-monitor much much better by making Mission Control
> desktops per-monitor_

YMMV, but Mission Control completely broke the way Spaces worked as compared
to prior Mac OS X releases -- which also happens to be the way I've worked
since the 90s.

I don't need full screen apps, or separate spaces per head, so from my
perspective, that change was an enormous net loss.

There are work-arounds, but they're imperfect:
[http://totalspaces.binaryage.com/](http://totalspaces.binaryage.com/)

Factor in silly stuff like notification center, and all Apple seems to have
done UX-wise for _me_ is make it harder to actually get work done.

~~~
eropple
You can turn off spaces-per-monitor, so I don't know what your complaint there
is.

I also don't really get what Mission Control's "your virtual desktops are in a
line" rather than Spaces' "your virtual desktops are in a square" makes you
lose. You can turn off the reordering (I do) and it becomes functionally the
same thing.

~~~
teacup50
> _You can turn off the reordering (I do) and it becomes functionally the same
> thing._

It's not.

You lose spatial organization; I place related projects next to each other
(top and to the right) to make it easy to switch between related working
contexts, eg LaTeX editor for documentation of a project + IDE for the actual
project code + source code for a related project to use as a reference, etc

Ditching the grid also means decreasing the amount of room in which spaces can
be laid out; The grid is a very efficient mechanism for switching between LOTS
of spaces.

I maintain a 4x4 grid of 16 spaces, and I _never_ quit anything, or close a
document -- RAM is cheap. I simply treat different areas of the grid as
different contextual workspaces. If I come back to a project two weeks later,
it's all still there.

------
wiredfool
The thing about Snow Leopard is that it's the terminal release for 32bit intel
machines. Like the one I'm typing on right now, the first white intel macbook.
(Though, I recently switched it to Ubuntu 13.10 after a hard drive crash. It
might go back. )

For a lot of things, It's still good enough. Chrome works. Mail works. ITunes.
And for my purposes, terminal and ssh too.

Similarly, I've still got an old PPC mini running Leopard (also it's terminal
release) as an iTunes server. It's no speed daemon, but it's not like serving
a couple mp3 streams is that hard. But it hasn't gotten updates in a while, so
I've got to look at moving on with that one.

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Encosia
To put that in perspective, Windows 7 and Snow Leopard were released to
manufacturing at about the same time, and that ~4 years is roughly 25% of the
time that Microsoft supported Windows XP.

I'm biased, but that kind of organization-wide upgrade treadmill would be a
nonstarter with most of my clients (ranging from small-business to
enterprise). Strange move by Apple if they hope to challenge Microsoft's lion
share of PCs in business.

~~~
chrisbolt
To put your comment into perspective, Vista came out almost 6 years after XP
and was a disaster. The next usable (and far more widely adopted) release,
Windows 7, came out 8 years after XP. Apple, on the other hand, has a far more
rapid release cycle which tends to not break things as much.

It's a strange move by Microsoft for them to make huge changes every 5 years,
rather than small ones every year or two like Apple. It's much easier to adapt
to change incrementally.

~~~
Encosia
If Apple's strategy is so sound and Microsoft's is so flawed, why did all of
OS X combined never even manage to crack 50% of Vista's peak user base,
according to global web stats[0] over that period?

Frankly, I have a hard time believing anyone technically minded really
believes Vista was a disaster. Windows 7 was essentially Vista SP3, but people
finally had decent hardware by that time and it seemed to be an improvement.

[0]: [http://gs.statcounter.com/#desktop-os-ww-
monthly-200807-2014...](http://gs.statcounter.com/#desktop-os-ww-
monthly-200807-201402)

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cubicle67
Snow Leopard is the most recent version of OSX able to run on 32 bit Intel
machines, like the one I have here. Sure, it's 8 years old but it's still
running well and I'm in no hurry to throw it out.

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cclogg
While I don't have any macs still running Snow Leopard, it has a special place
in my heart because it can still install Warcraft 3 as well as play many older
Mac games pre-Intel.

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annnnd
This is one of the things I love about Linux. There was an announcement at the
end of 2012 that kernel will no longer support 386 chip - after 21 years! And
distributions will ship older kernels for many additional years.

Compare that to MS and Apple forcing new versions of OS (and in Apple's case,
hardware) on its users... I can understand their position, but it is still
frustrating for the users. I find Windows XP superior to both Vista and
Windows 7 (not to mention "Lego" Windows).

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interstitial
And Wordpress is/was going to try the same thing with some official ancient
stable/always-security-patched release. I don't follow the WP world anymore.
It was a noble thought back then, I just wonder if anyone actually runs the
old stable release.

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akama
It does seem strange that Apple, which does a great job regarding
fragmentation on the mobile platform, has such difficulties with the issue on
desktop platforms.

~~~
IBM
That will be less of an issue going forward with free OS updates. Then it will
just be people who don't want to upgrade for whatever reason that stay behind.

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wiradikusuma
I attempted to upgrade my old MacBook White (Core 2 Duo) to Mavericks, but
apparently it only supports Snow Leopard.

~~~
liviu
Because you have 32 bit architecture. It is 2007 or 2008 model?

~~~
r00fus
Core2's are 64bit chips. It's the graphics card (Intel GMA 950) that Apple is
likely deeming too old.

Hopefully my 2008 AL macbook stays supported for another release - it's just
as nice looking as a modern macbook pro, and with an SSD it's quite functional
yet.

~~~
sbuk
32bit EFI actually.

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AshFurrow
Vulnerable to what, exactly? Oh, at the end of the article they mention that
SL might become vulnerable to some future security flaw. Kind of a link-baity
headily if you ask me.

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shultays
How old is snow leopard?

