5 ms·

Any chance of getting Snow Leopard? That was the most stable version I've ever used.

gjsman-1000 5y ago
Until very recently, you could actually still buy Snow Leopard from the Apple Store in boxed format until early 2021. Apparently, MacOS versions 10.5 and earlier couldn't upgrade to MacOS Lion or later without updating to Snow Leopard first. Probably had to do with the Mac App Store distribution, and for that reason, Snow Leopard was on sale for a long time. Some users on Reddit though said that until Apple removed it, there were long shipping times... almost as if some lackey was manually burning discs and putting stickers on them, but who knows? Anyway, you can still find them on eBay for that reason. https://www.ebay.com/itm/203505863379?hash=item2f61e50ad3:g:LbcAAOSw00VfrUyq https://www.ebay.com/itm/203505863379?hash=item2f61e50ad3:g:...
nr2x 5y ago
The platonic ideal of an OS.
- astrange 5y ago
  It was easy to lose work because state restoration and autosave weren't added until the next one.
  - uniqueid 5y ago
    Only in theory. In practice, the new document paradigm often resulted in users accidentally overwriting their work. It didn't help that Lion was also the buggiest OS Apple has ever released.
ChuckMcM 5y ago
Still have the original Snow Leopard disk that came with my older Macbook. I agree it was peak MacOS.
- spideymans 5y ago
  Last version of OS X before mobile ate the world.
2bitencryption 5y ago
Snow Leopard, for anyone who doesn't remember, was famously introduced on stage as having "0 New Features": https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2009/08/mac-os-x-10-6/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2009/08/mac-os-x-10-6/ If only Apple had the confidence to do that again. Imagine an entire update of MacOS dedicated solely to stability, and not iOS parity.
- joshstrange 5y ago
  One can hope that with the combination of ARM, Swift/SwiftUI, and unification of their OS's it will be easier to focus on stability since they can get more of the apps/frameworks "for free" (aka less, but still something that would free up time).
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  Snow Leopard did have fewer new features than prior releases, with a focus on stability and polish, but "0" was only ever a marketing line. Snow Leopard added QuickTime X, Dock Exposé and exchange support in Apple Mail, to name three. Plus, major new under-the-hood technologies like Grand Central Dispatch absolutely would have been touted on stage in other years.
- pfranz 5y ago
  I really think the "0 new features" was a fluke of history that elided with marketing. Wikipedia better describes it as, "no new major visual changes." [1] - Finder was completely rewritten in Cocoa - Microsoft Exchange support was added - QuickTime X introduced - Grand Central Dispatch introduced - OpenCL support added - and a bunch of other stuff Each one could have caused issues, but thankfully didn't. However, Snow Leopard did have an issue that could delete all user data [2]. The accident of history is the transition from paid upgrades on physical media to free updates via the web and an increased release cycle. Previous updates were $129, Snow Leopard (Lion and Mountain Lion) was $29, and Mavericks was free. This also was when the 2-3 year release cycle moved to an annual one. The App Store was added as a point release of Snow Leopard. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Snow_Leopard#New_or_changed_features https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Snow_Leopard#New_or_c... [2] https://methodshop.com/snow-leopard-bug/ https://methodshop.com/snow-leopard-bug/
ac29 5y ago
There's a copy of Snow Leopard server here: https://archive.org/details/osxserver-10.6 https://archive.org/details/osxserver-10.6
classichasclass 5y ago
I suspect the reason Apple didn't make 10.4-10.6 freely available -- at least Intel, anyway -- is because they pay for the Rosetta license seats (QuickTransit wasn't free).
ffhhj 5y ago
After Snow Leopard, every update made the Mac slower and slower. It seemed intentional to make you update the hardware because sometimes after restarting the OS behaved normally, but most of the time MacOS was sluggish and didn't reach full CPU usage.
- mekster 5y ago
  It's funny even though hardware had improved significantly over the years, nothing is faster from the user's perspective, moreso for Windows and it doesn't even mean we get satisfied proportionately.

Until very recently, you could actually still buy Snow Leopard from the Apple Store in boxed format until early 2021. Apparently, MacOS versions 10.5 and earlier couldn't upgrade to MacOS Lion or later without updating to Snow Leopard first. Probably had to do with the Mac App Store distribution, and for that reason, Snow Leopard was on sale for a long time. Some users on Reddit though said that until Apple removed it, there were long shipping times... almost as if some lackey was manually burning discs and putting stickers on them, but who knows? Anyway, you can still find them on eBay for that reason. https://www.ebay.com/itm/203505863379?hash=item2f61e50ad3:g:LbcAAOSw00VfrUyq https://www.ebay.com/itm/203505863379?hash=item2f61e50ad3:g:...

nr2x 5y ago

The platonic ideal of an OS.

astrange 5y ago
It was easy to lose work because state restoration and autosave weren't added until the next one.
- uniqueid 5y ago
  Only in theory. In practice, the new document paradigm often resulted in users accidentally overwriting their work. It didn't help that Lion was also the buggiest OS Apple has ever released.

ChuckMcM 5y ago

Still have the original Snow Leopard disk that came with my older Macbook. I agree it was peak MacOS.

spideymans 5y ago
Last version of OS X before mobile ate the world.

2bitencryption 5y ago

Snow Leopard, for anyone who doesn't remember, was famously introduced on stage as having "0 New Features": https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2009/08/mac-os-x-10-6/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2009/08/mac-os-x-10-6/ If only Apple had the confidence to do that again. Imagine an entire update of MacOS dedicated solely to stability, and not iOS parity.

joshstrange 5y ago
One can hope that with the combination of ARM, Swift/SwiftUI, and unification of their OS's it will be easier to focus on stability since they can get more of the apps/frameworks "for free" (aka less, but still something that would free up time).
Wowfunhappy 5y ago
Snow Leopard did have fewer new features than prior releases, with a focus on stability and polish, but "0" was only ever a marketing line. Snow Leopard added QuickTime X, Dock Exposé and exchange support in Apple Mail, to name three. Plus, major new under-the-hood technologies like Grand Central Dispatch absolutely would have been touted on stage in other years.
pfranz 5y ago
I really think the "0 new features" was a fluke of history that elided with marketing. Wikipedia better describes it as, "no new major visual changes." [1] - Finder was completely rewritten in Cocoa - Microsoft Exchange support was added - QuickTime X introduced - Grand Central Dispatch introduced - OpenCL support added - and a bunch of other stuff Each one could have caused issues, but thankfully didn't. However, Snow Leopard did have an issue that could delete all user data [2]. The accident of history is the transition from paid upgrades on physical media to free updates via the web and an increased release cycle. Previous updates were $129, Snow Leopard (Lion and Mountain Lion) was $29, and Mavericks was free. This also was when the 2-3 year release cycle moved to an annual one. The App Store was added as a point release of Snow Leopard. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Snow_Leopard#New_or_changed_features https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Snow_Leopard#New_or_c... [2] https://methodshop.com/snow-leopard-bug/ https://methodshop.com/snow-leopard-bug/

ac29 5y ago

There's a copy of Snow Leopard server here: https://archive.org/details/osxserver-10.6 https://archive.org/details/osxserver-10.6

classichasclass 5y ago

I suspect the reason Apple didn't make 10.4-10.6 freely available -- at least Intel, anyway -- is because they pay for the Rosetta license seats (QuickTransit wasn't free).

ffhhj 5y ago

After Snow Leopard, every update made the Mac slower and slower. It seemed intentional to make you update the hardware because sometimes after restarting the OS behaved normally, but most of the time MacOS was sluggish and didn't reach full CPU usage.

mekster 5y ago
It's funny even though hardware had improved significantly over the years, nothing is faster from the user's perspective, moreso for Windows and it doesn't even mean we get satisfied proportionately.