. Source model, with components August 28, 2009; 9 years ago ( 2009-08-28) 10.6.8 v1.1 (Build 10K549) / July 25, 2011; 7 years ago ( 2011-07-25) Update method Platforms, type and (APSL) Preceded by Succeeded by Official website at the (archived September 29, 2009) Support status Unsupported as of February 25, 2014 and iTunes ended in September 2014, though the last security update happened in September 2013 and an update to the on Snow Leopard was made in January 2016. Part of a series on. Mac OS X Snow Leopard (version 10.6) is the seventh of, 's desktop and server for computers.

Snow Leopard was publicly unveiled on June 8, 2009 at the. On August 28, 2009, it was released worldwide, and was made available for purchase from Apple's website and its retail stores at the price of US$29 for a single-user license. As a result of the low price, initial sales of Snow Leopard were significantly higher than that of its predecessors.

The release of Snow Leopard came nearly two years after the introduction of, the second longest time span between successive Mac OS X releases (the time span between and Leopard was the longest). Unlike those of previous versions of Mac OS X, the goals of Snow Leopard were improved performance, greater efficiency and the reduction of its overall. Addition of new end-user features was not a primary consideration: its name signified its goal to be a refinement of the previous OS X version,.

Much of the software in Mac OS X was extensively rewritten for this release in order to take advantage fully of modern hardware. New programming frameworks, such as, were created, allowing software developers to use in their applications. This is also the first Mac OS release since that does not support Macs using processors, as Apple now intends to focus on. As support for was dropped in, Snow Leopard is the last version of Mac OS X that is able to run PowerPC-only applications.

Snow Leopard was succeeded by (version 10.7) on July 20, 2011. Since then, Apple has continued to sell Snow Leopard from its online store for the benefit of users that require Snow Leopard in order to upgrade to later versions of OS X, which have all been distributed through the introduced in the Snow Leopard 10.6.6 update. Snow Leopard is the last release of Mac OS X to support the 32-bit.

Because of this, Snow Leopard still remains somewhat popular alongsidedespite its lack of continued support, mostly because of its ability to run PowerPC-based applications as Rosetta was dropped in. Snow Leopard was also the last release of Mac OS X to ship with a welcome video at first boot after installation. Reception of Snow Leopard was positive. Although Snow Leopard has been officially out of support since 2014, it remains available for purchase both on Apple's App Store, and in the form of available through Apple's online store. Contents. System requirements Apple states the following basic Snow Leopard system requirements are:.

Mac computer with an processor. ' processors such as and can run only 32-bit applications; later architecture processors such as, Core i5 and i7 are also able to run 64-bit applications. 1 GB of. 5 GB of free disk space. (also accessible via Remote Disc) or external or DVD drive for installation Additional requirements to use certain features:.

hardware acceleration support requires an, or graphics card. requires a supported or Snow Leopard does not support -based Macs (e.g., (G3-G5), all, plus pre-February 2006 and the ), although PowerPC applications are supported via, which is now an optional install. License Snow Leopard is available as an upgrade for Intel-based computers. Single-user licenses and 'family pack' licenses for up to five computers are available. For qualifying Mac computers bought after June 8, 2009, Apple offered a discounted price through their 'up-to-date' program provided that customers' orders were faxed or postmarked by December 26, 2009.

The standalone retail version of Snow Leopard is marketed as being restricted to users of, while the recommended upgrade path from Apple for is through the 'Mac Box Set', which includes Mac OS X Snow Leopard and the current versions of. There are three licenses available. These licenses differ in their requirements for pre-installed versions of Mac OS X:. Leopard Upgrade: requires that Mac OS X Leopard already be installed. If you have purchased an Upgrade for Mac OS X Leopard license, then subject to the terms and conditions of this License, you are granted a limited non-exclusive license to install, use and run one (1) copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-branded computer as long as that computer has a properly licensed copy of Mac OS X Leopard already installed on it. A 'Family Pack Upgrade for Mac OS X Leopard' license is also mentioned as a subset of the Leopard Upgrade.

Single Use: places no restriction on which (if any) version of Mac OS X should already be installed. Used for the non-upgrade and Mac Box Set versions of Snow Leopard. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License. You are granted a limited non-exclusive license to install, use and run one (1) copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-branded computer at a time. Family Pack: identical to the Single Use license in this respect. It is not entirely clear which license is offered with the retail version of Snow Leopard. As noted above, Apple's website advertised this version as an 'upgrade from Mac OS X Leopard for $29' and suggest that others upgrade using the Mac Box Set, implying the stand-alone retail version to be a 'Leopard Upgrade' license.

On the other hand, some Apple press materials appear to indicate that this version is, in fact, the 'Single Use' license: The Snow Leopard single user license will be available for a suggested retail price of $29 (US) (emphasis added) However, even if the retail edition of Snow Leopard is in fact a 'Leopard Upgrade', the company has acknowledged that there is no technical barrier in that edition preventing a direct upgrade from Mac OS X 'Tiger'. The Leopard Upgrade license explicitly applies to the Up-To-Date Program (US$9.95) for Macs bought between June 8 and December 26, 2009 and the installation discs provided through this program are clearly marked as upgrades unlike either of the retail editions. New or changed features Mac OS X Snow Leopard is intended to be a release aimed to refine the existing feature set, expand the technological capabilities of the operating system, and improve application efficiency. Many of the changes involve how the system works in the background and are not intended to be seen by the user. For example, the Finder application was completely rewritten in the.

Despite significant changes in the software, users will experience almost no changes in the user interface. Snow Leopard includes the following changes:. – An application store built in the image of the iOS App Store. Released on version 10.6.6. now allows partitions to read and copy files from partitions. The new version also adds support for advanced features on Cinema Displays and a new command-line version of the Startup Disk Control Panel.

The has been completely rewritten in to take advantage of the new technologies introduced in Snow Leopard. A much smaller OS footprint, taking up about 7 GB less space than. Some of the recovered disk space (250 MB) is because printer drivers are now downloaded or installed only as needed, rather than being pre-installed. The default install only contains those drivers needed for existing printers and a small subset of popular printers. enhancements include greater resolution video chats in iChat Theater and lowered upload bandwidth requirements. support is now integrated into the, and applications. However, only is supported and customers using prior versions of Exchange must either upgrade or use.

Full trackpad support has been added to notebooks prior to those introduced in October 2008. While the original and other early multi-touch trackpad enabled notebooks had support for some gestures, they were unable to use four-finger gestures. This limitation has now been removed in Snow Leopard. can infer the structure of a paragraph in a PDF document., the next version of player and multimedia framework, has been completely rewritten into a full 64-bit Cocoa application and builds on the media technologies in Mac OS X, such as, and, to deliver playback.

Apple has redesigned the QuickTime user interface to resemble the full-screen QuickTime view in prior versions, where the entire window displays the video. The titlebar and playback controls fade in and out as needed. QuickTime X also supports and takes advantage of to provide high-quality color reproduction. If Snow Leopard is installed on a Mac with an nVidia GeForce 9400M, 320M or GT 330M graphics card, QuickTime X will be able to use its video-decoding capabilities to reduce CPU load. features Top Sites, Cover Flow, VoiceOver, expanded standards support, and built-in crash resistance, which prevents browser crashes caused by plug-ins by running them in separate processes. Safari 4 is bundled with Snow Leopard but does not require it, as it is available for free for Mac OS X Tiger and Leopard as well as.

connection establishment and backups are now much faster. has also been greatly enhanced in Snow Leopard. Reading of web pages is improved with Auto Web Spots — areas of a page automatically designated for quick access. On newer Apple portables, trackpad gestures can be used to control VoiceOver functions, including the 'rotor' gesture first seen in VoiceOver for the, allowing for the changing of certain VoiceOver navigation options by rotating fingers on the trackpad. Support is also improved, with displays supported for the first time. The 10.6.6 update introduced support for the, Apple's digital distribution platform for OS X applications. Refinements to the user interface While the was completely rewritten in, it did not receive a major user interface overhaul.

Instead, the interface has been modified in several areas to promote ease of use. These changes include:. The 'traffic light' titlebar controls are now slightly lighter in appearance and have less depth than they did in Mac OS X 10.5. can now display windows for a single program by left clicking and holding its icon in the dock. Windows are arranged in a new grid pattern.

Contextual menus which come out of icons now have more options and have a new look, with a semi-transparent charcoal background and white text. An option has been added to the Finder preferences that allows the user to modify search behavior. The default setting can be selected to (1) search the entire computer, (2) search only the current folder from which the search was initiated, or (3) perform the search based on the previously used scope. Dock, when viewed as a grid, allow viewing of a subfolder as a new stack, rather than launching a window, in a manner similar to 'tunnelling'. When viewed as grids or lists, scroll-bars are provided to navigate folders with more items than the current screen resolution will accommodate, as the program does not scale the icons to show as many as possible the way it did in OS X 10.5.

The default has been changed from 1.8 to 2.2 to better serve the color needs of digital content producers and consumers. Windows can now be minimized directly onto their application's icon in the dock. Faster and icon refreshes. When searching for a network, the menu-bar icon animates until it finds a network and shows network strength of available networks in the drop down menu. for are now used in strictly decimal meaning (as opposed to their ) when describing disk space, such that an indicated file size of 1 MB corresponds to 1 million bytes, as commonly used by hard disk manufacturers. Snow Leopard shuts down and goes to sleep faster.

New wallpapers As with most upgrades of Mac OS X, new wallpapers are available. There are new wallpapers in the Nature (two of which are of ), Plants and Black and White sub-folders under the Apple folder.

Furthermore, there are new Apple wallpaper sub-folders with multiple wallpapers:. Art: Dancer on the Stage, Poppies Blooming,. Patterns: Pinstripe and Saree. New solid colors can be used as wallpapers as well. There is a new blue and gray, as well as a solid kelp which serves as the 'green wallpaper.' The default 'space nebula' wallpaper has been updated as well.

Dropped features. is no longer supported. It is no longer possible to change an application's language using the Finder's 'Get Info' dialogue. While there are workarounds for some applications, others (such as Adobe After Effects CS4) will not be able to be run in a different language than the one installed without using Terminal commands or third-party software., which are per-file attributes that define, for a file that has a creator code, what application should open that file, regardless of its extension, have had their priority in the application selection process reduced. Creating or updating a volume is no longer supported. Developer technologies 64-bit architecture added limited support for applications on machines with 64-bit processors; extended the support for 64-bit applications to include applications using most of Mac OS X's libraries and frameworks.

In Snow Leopard, most built-in applications have been rebuilt to use the 64-bit (excluding, and applications). They will run in mode on machines with 32-bit processors, and in 64-bit mode on machines with 64-bit processors. In addition, the Mac OS X has been rebuilt to run in 64-bit mode on some machines. On those machines, Snow Leopard supports up to 16 of RAM. Newer and machines will run a 64-bit kernel by default; newer and machines can run a 64-bit kernel, but will not do so by default. Users wishing to use the 64-bit kernel on those machines must hold down the numbers 6 and 4 on the keyboard while booting to get the 64-bit kernel to load. A change to the com.apple.Boot.plist will also enable users with compatible computers to permanently boot into 64-bit for those wishing to do so.

Stuart Harris, software product marketing manager at Apple Australia, said, 'For the most part, everything that they experience on the Mac, from the 64-bit point of view, the applications, the operating system, is all going to be 64-bit, but that at this stage there were very few things, such as device drivers, that required 64-bit mode at the kernel level'. The Open Group.

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at.: a user-edited list of Mac applications that have been tested on Snow Leopard. at Preceded by Mac OS X 10.6 2009 Succeeded.