Jun 24, 2011 06:49 GMT  ·  By

Apple this week released the final version of Mac OS X 10.6.8, an incremental update to its Snow Leopard operating system mainly tasked with preparing Macs for the upgrade to OS X Lion.

According to the tech giant headquartered at 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, California, the 10.6.8 update is recommended for all users running Mac OS X Snow Leopard.

The release includes general operating system fixes that enhance stability, compatibility, and security.

Code corrections included in the update target issues that may cause Preview to unexpectedly quit, support for IPv6, VPN reliability, and the ability to identify and remove known variants of Mac Defender, a recently emerged piece of malware targeting Macs worldwide.

OS X 10.6.8, however, is primarily focused on enhancing the Mac App Store “to get your Mac ready to upgrade to Mac OS X Lion,” according to the release notes.

It delivers the usual bag of security fixes in areas like AirPort, App Store, ATS, Certificate Trust Policy, ColorSync, CoreFoundation, CoreGraphics, FTP Server, ImageIO, International Components for Unicode, Kernel, Libsystem, MobileMe, MySQL, OpenSSL, QuickLook, QuickTime, and others.

Mac OS X 10.6.8 weighs in at 474.2 MB for the delta update, and 1.09 GB as a combo update, which increments the base version of Snow Leopard (10.6) to the most recent version specified.

As usual, Apple also updated the Server version of Snow Leopard with an incremental 10.6.8 release.

For users of Snow Leopard Server, fixes incorporated in 10.6.8 include:

- properly displaying videos in Wiki pages when viewed from Firefox or Internet Explorer browsers - reliability of using sharepoints with Time Machine - reliability of vacation mail notices - improved reliability of processing international character encodings in iCal Server - improved authentication support when accessing iCal Server from iOS devices - properly enabling previous updates in Software Update Server - improved reliability for cascading Software Update Servers

To update to Mac OS X 10.6.8, users can either launch Software Update from their Mac's Apple menu, or download the standalone installers from Apple’s Support Downloads area, or from Softpedia using the links below.

Download Mac OS X 10.6.8 Client (Free)

Download Mac OS X 10.6.8 Server (Free)