

The causes of Apple's longer-than-usual support for Snow Leopard are just as opaque - Apple habitually declines to comment about anything related to security - but analysts and experts have tapped several reasons. Or users who are left in the dust will just go to the store and buy a new device." "They live by the motto that users will just take all updates all the time as soon as they become available. "Let's face it, Apple doesn't go out of their way to ensure users are aware when products are going end of life," said Andrew Storms, director of DevOps at San Francisco-based CloudPassage, in an interview. But Apple doesn't, leaving users guessing about when their current Macs will drop into the unsupported dustbin. None of this would be noteworthy if Apple, like Microsoft, clearly spelled out its operating system support policies. Under that plan, Snow Leopard was "n-2" when Mountain Lion shipped in mid-2012, and by rights should have been retired around then. Traditionally, Apple has patched only the OS X editions designated as "n" and "n-1" - where "n" is the newest available - and discarded support for "n-2" either before the launch of "n" or immediately after. Snow Leopard was last updated with security fixes in September, the same day Apple last provided the final patches for Safari 5.1.


#Firefox for mac snow leopard update#
Apple continued to update Safari 4, the newest version that ran on Tiger, for an additional 13 months, last fixing flaws in the browser in November 2010. The company did the same for OS X Tiger, officially known as OS X 10.4, which was retired from support in September 2009, more than four years after its introduction. That edition was the last that ran in OS X Leopard, which was released in October 2007.Īpple provided the final update to Leopard in June 2011. In July 2011, for example, Apple patched Safari 5.0 for the final time, updating the browser to version 5.0.6. company calls its quits for the browser, it's already decided to retire the pertinent OS. Historically, Apple has patched Safari longer than the supporting operating system, so when the Cupertino, Calif.
