14 DAY TRIAL // After the release of update 10.9.2 for Mavericks and Security Update 2014-001 for OS X Lion and Mountain Lion, rumors broke out that Apple had stopped supporting users of Mac OS X version 10.6, aka Snow Leopard. As it turns out, the company still sells it.
Despite being the pioneer of digital downloads, Apple still sells boxed copies of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. The OS comes on a DVD that costs $19.99 (€18.00) and is bundled with some documentation and some lovely Apple stickers.
Rumors of Apple dropping Snow Leopard emerged right after the company shipped the newest security updates to its user base. For one reason or another, the company ended up patching bugs only in OS X versions from 2010 or later. The 2009 Mac OS (Snow Leopard) got nothing, despite being installed on 1 in 5 Macs.
According to fairerplatform.com, there’s a good reason why Apple didn’t bother updating Snow Leopard: the OS “does not include the faulty ‘go to fail’ code.” While that’s certainly an accurate observation, Apple didn’t just patch this single flaw with its recent updates, but dozens of others too.
At least some of those flaws could also affect Snow Leopard machines, but everyone knows Apple doesn’t put a high-priority label on every security bug it finds. Of course, this is hardly an indication that it plans to continue supporting Snow Leopard, but the fact that it still sells the software through its online store is.
“If you need to purchase Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, you may order it from this page,” Apple states on the purchase page.
It then warns customers that “The most current version of OS X is OS X 10.9 Mavericks,” and directs them to a separate page where they can learn more about the latest OS X version and read a tutorial on how to upgrade from various older versions of the operating system.
For instance, Apple points out that “If you’re running Snow Leopard (10.6.x), update to the latest version of Snow Leopard before you download OS X Mavericks from the Mac App Store. Click the Apple icon and choose Software Update to install OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.8, the latest version.”
For customers who are still stuck with an OS X 10.5 (Leopard) installation, Apple says, “If [you] would like to upgrade to OS X Mavericks, first you’ll need to upgrade to OS X Snow Leopard,” and directs customers back to the Snow Leopard purchase page on store.apple.com.