Was Snow Leopard 10.6 greatest macOS release ever? An OS X essay
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ต.ค. 2022
- OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard long has been held as the gold standard for OS X/macOS releases. It's not uncommon to hear people to this day laud Snow Leopard as the best version of any Apple OS. There's been a felt attempts to contextualize why Snow Leopard was so loved with solid points but they fall a bit short.
Corrections:
OS X's kernel is from Mach from NeXTSTEP, which NeXSTEP borrowed additional kernel layers and low-level user space code derived from parts of BSD .
Written version (with sources)
blog.greggant.com/posts/2022/1...
0:00 Opening
0:39 Snow Leopard: The Myth, The Legend
1:27 OS X 10.0 - 10.1 Cheetah and Puma CORRECTION based off NeXSTEP Kernel (see corrections)
2:13 OS X 10.2 Jaguar aka "Jagwire"
3:03 OS X 10.3 Panther
3:40 OS X 10.4 Tiger
4:31 OS X 10.5 Leopard
4:51 OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard
9:16 Macs, iPods, iPhones, iTunes and Steve
10:10 OS X 10.7 - 10.8 - Lion and Mountain Lion
10:51: OS X 10.9 Mavericks
12:55 OS X 10.9 Mavericks Virtual Memory Compression and other tech
15:07 OS X 10.10 Yosemite
15:36 OS X/macOS 10.11 - 10.14 El Capitan, Sierra, High Sierra, Mojave
16:26 Windows 8 - 10
18:03 macOS 10.15 Catalina, a period of regression
19:11 A gated community: Big Sur / Monterey
20:24 The Crux
21:41 Disclaimer
21:54 Bonus Content! Upscaled Desktops!
In this video, my goal is to explain why Snow Leopard was the most loved OS X release but more importantly what version of OS X I'd argue was the high water mark for OS X ;)
This video has been a labor of love from someone who's used every version of OS X including the beta (which I bought back in the year 2000), who's somewhere between Mac aficionado and Apple skeptic, and author of a few popular online guides related Apple hardware. My first Mac of my own was a PowerMac G3 (in 1999), and since I've owned a PowerBook G3 Pismo, G4, G5, Mac Pro 2008, MacBook 2007 white, MacBook 2008 (Unibody), Mac Pro 2010, Mac Pro 2019, and an M1 Max. I also have had work provided MacBook Pros for years (2013, 2015, 2017, 2021). I even built a short lived hacktinosh. I say this not to brag but rather to say, I've experienced OS 9 and especially OS X on quite a bit of hardware.
Everything in this video is from my own lived experience, from bouncing around between esoteric web browsers in days before Safari, like Omniweb, Chimera/Camino, Mozilla, and dual booting to OS 9 to run Photoshop 5.5. OS X/macOS is the glue that keeps me bound to Apple's computers as if Apple were to magically offer macOS for any hardware, I doubt I'd ever bought another Apple desktop post 2010.... and it shouldn't be that way.
Lastly, 10.6 was a great release of OS X. Don't get it twisted.
Please share this video if you enjoyed it as it's taken far far far too much time to make.
Bonus Content!
Every OS X (macOS) 10.6 Snow Leopard Nature Desktop - in Glorious 5k Resolution
blog.greggant.com/posts/2021/0...
Every OS X Snow Leopard Abstract Desktop - in Glorious 5k and 8k Resolution
blog.greggant.com/posts/2021/0...
Links:
The Mac, The Myth, The Legend: How Snow Leopard became synonymous with reliability
9to5mac.com/2018/01/31/snow-l...
Early Benchmarks Of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion
www.phoronix.com/review/apple...
Snow Leopard vs. Lion: Performance head-to-head
www.cnet.com/culture/snow-leo...
OS X 10.9 Mavericks: The Ars Technica Review
arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/...
Future is a gated community (my reaction to the 2013 Mac Pro announcement in 2013)
blog.greggant.com/posts/2013/0...
Wanna talk retro Mac OS/OS X with a small group people? Check out The Tech Corner run by fellow TH-cam creator, Quinn of Tech Corner. It's where I talk tech.
/ discord
Credit to Apple.com for certain device images. Credit to Apple for WWDC/Macworld footage.
Video/Music/Editing by me. FCPX/Motion/Pixelmator Pro/Sketch/Cubase/Ableton.
Topics covered in passing:
Mac gaming, Steve Jobs, nVidia, planned obsolescence, walled garden, future of the Mac - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
Correction:
1:37 "Based off the FreeBSD Kernel" - This is only partially correct. As many of you have pointed out, OS X's kernel is based on a heavily modified version of the Mach Kernel with portions from the FreeBSD kernel, which formed the XNU kernel for NeXTSTEP.
That's correct as Jobs brought all the "know how" with the key devs with him when he returned back to Apple from Next company he founded and which played a crucial role in reviving Apple and getting it back to its feet to it is right now. Mac OS X was therefore a culmination and collaboration of both exNext and Apple devs.
The reason why Snow leopard is cool is it still had the aqua scroll bar. Graphical user interface rather than solid color fill user interface. It was vista way before vista, visually speaking. It's the end of that era which kicked off with beta OS X
Snow leopard was the first version of osx I ever used. So it holds a special place in my heart as one of the best os’s ever made.
Same here. I still have the CDs. Maybe it’s time to fire up this baby again.
Me too. In the beginning of 2020, a friend of mine (Roy) introduced me to a buddy of his and we went over to his place. Roy's buddy had a 2010 21.5" iMac face down in some junk.
I asked about it and he said he didn't want it because it was broken and stripped of the HD. It was my first iMac. I took it apart, cleaned it, upgraded the i3 to an i5, replaced the missing Apple HD bracket, put in a brannd new WD Caviar Blue 500GB SSD. No RAM, so I put in 2x 4GB and 2x 2GB sticks for 12GB RAM.There in the DVD drive was the original Apple restore DVD.
The Snow Leopard intro was the first one I ever seen, and this is the first 1080p screen I ever owned (other than my TV).
WOW! Sadly Roy would pass away in 2022 from alcoholism. He was only in his early 60's.
And was the last OS to cost $29.
My first one was Tiger in 2005 on the last iBook model ever made 😊
Mavs was pretty badass. It was so solid for audio production, that I didn't move from it for years. I still have my SL 10.6.3 retail disc back home. Thanks for the trip down memory lane Greg. That never gets old and you do a great job at presentation.
That's pretty cool, I think I have only not-for-resale Snow Leopard.
Indeed. Tiger, Snow Leopard, and Mavericks were great releases.
Mavs were the last OS for many of the older Macs like the 2009 iMac my wife had
I STILL have a Mavericks partition ready when I need ProTools /Mbox. It was the first upgrade I made from Snow Leopard - and loved it. Then El Capitan, High Sierra and (forced and unhappy with it) Catalina.
People just liked Snow Leopard because it was the last OSX supporting Rosetta (1), so a lot of people refused to upgrade, just like those with PPCs refused to upgrade from Tiger due to its ability to still run an OS9 layer.
Yeah that’s come up in the comments and it’s a valid point, wish I’d mentioned that in the vid.
And how people like me refuse to upgrade from mojave because it‘s the last one to provide a 32-bit compatibility mode of sorts for older programs/games
I agree. Losing my Rosetta support lost some of my favorite software forever.
Buy a Mac that will run the software that you want to use - if that software is still useful. They are easily available and not expensive compared to modern hardware. A Quicksilver (sub $200 on eBay) or Mirror Drive Door will run whatever OS9 or early OSX programs you want.
The OS actually seemed more fun also, due to the intro video being removed in 10.7 and other stuff that made 10.7 seem more boring
The most surprising part of all this was that you aren't sitting on at least 100k subs, great video! I got my first MacBook in 2008 so the Snow Leopard release the following year always ties to happy memories of a new, stable and refreshing computing experience and leaving the then-hated Windows of the previous decade behind. I agree that Mavericks was the tops of that era, and it had perhaps the all-time best-matched system wallpaper, that wave perfectly conveyed the speed and power lurking beneath your fingertips.
TH-cam is a funny place, I can’t tell if I’m doing good or bad as I’ve seen people complain about only 50 subscribers after a year and others complaining about one video going viral getting a million views and all their other content like in the hundreds. In any case I appreciate it.
Yeah snow leopard was pretty fantastic to be fair but I just was working full time as a ux dev when mavericks dropped and it made my life so easy as I had resolution independence on any display, not just my MacBook Pro.
I bought my polycarbonate macbook at the day it was released and even received free copy of it.Otherwise the license was like 30$ at the time.Very stable OS absolutely.
You had to be there. Snow Leopard was everything done right. There will never be a more perfectly crafted Macintosh operating system.
Ha, but I was ;)
Catalina dropping 32-bit support is a thing I can never forgive
For me mojave is the end boss
To be fair I can see windows doing it in another 15 years
@@papi-tjulo I love the newer Mac hardware but I really want to run Mojave on my M2 Mac Mini.
same. i also hated that ios 11 dropped 32 bit app support
This is why I still haven't upgraded past Mojave yet!
putting snow leopard on my hackintosh at 12 years old was probably my biggest tech accomplishment at the time lol, loved that OS
I worked for Apple support during Yosemite’s launch. It was beyond painful. All our Macs in the call centre were upgraded to a Yosemite golden master release just ahead of the official launch; so we’d be familiar with it before customers got their hands on it en masse.
Crashes and performance issues were a constant in the office. It wasn’t uncommon for reps to be stuck rebooting their iMacs several times a day.
The people calling in didn’t fair much better. Most of my Mac-related calls were users who wanted to downgrade back to Mavericks.
Same here...people hated the new look/icons and didn´t know how to pronounce Yosemite (in the Netherlands). My 2008 blackmacbook still works on SL (downgraded it from lion) and used with a projectmix i/o for audiorecording.
I used Yosemite and didn't have an issue on my mid 2009 imac. I then upgraded to El capitan. No issues there either.
@@syncondis I always thought it was pronounced yoh-zuh-might, I had no idea I’ve been pronouncing it wrong all this time lol.
After Steve Jobs passing, the Mac community desperately needs you to be on Apple's payroll as Steve's successor! Amen!
Ha, I’m just a mid tier ux developer with a Louis Rossmann sized chip on his shoulder for right to repair.
I’d last a day before Apple’s share holders revolted after declaring the App Store would lower its share to 10% and dedicate more resources to removing scam apps, switch iPhones to USBc, open up the h2 chipset to 3rd party licensing for earbuds, and announce a commitment to right to repair, modularity, and support to reduce ewaste.
Actually pretty sure this the more likely scenario:
No name Ux developer / wannabe youtuber given $2.7 million by Apple, declares "I was wrong about their products". Professes the walled garden "keeps us safe" from hotel balcony in Marseille via FaceTime. He was last seen boarding a 105′ Mangusta Yacht with two 20 something females, a case of Chateau red wine, after exiting his BMW.
One day very soon I also believe private ownership is needed I will always say Apple in the first name in creativity and needs paired with the first name in high-fidelity
I had to smile at the mention of Microsoft Vista. At work, we had to examine it as a potential OS and that is when I made the personal jump to Apple Macs. I grew up in the early days of DOS and when Windows was not on every computer. Of recent, I had made mention how there was a time when OSX, even with its foibles was a fun OS for home users. You covered some of those OSs here and that is appreciated.
I do agree with this. Mavericks was the most stable system I used. Running daily Pro Tools and Traktor on a MBP 2008I had only one issue when my hard drive died.
Great video, thanks for the awesome work on upscaling the backgrounds!
Thanks to watching to the end, I think most people miss that.
The very first Mac I bought on my own had snow leopard installed from the factory. I LOVED it.
Finally someone talks about Mavericks!
I still use it to this very day: I love the design, the feel, the speed, everything.
I felt like Apple got a little carried away with the color vampire look and less recognizable icons. Uniform icons may "look" cleaner but at the cost of UX.
@@dmug I wish they could go back to the skeuomorphic design they nailed back then. Now with the simplistic design , it just feel like any other company’s product.
How do you find software support? I'm torn between Mavericks, Windows, or Linux on a '13 MacBook Air since Big Sur runs quite poorly on it. But the purpose of an OS is to run software, so if I can't install much, it won't be any good.
@@xX_cumtech_Xx They fired Scott Forstall for refusing to sign an apology letter for Apple Maps. He told them not to beef with Google and that TomTom data sucked. They didn't listen, and he refused to apologize to the public for the offensive end product they forced him to work on and make, so they canned him. He was the father of skeumorphic design, and just to spite him, they had Jony take over and remove it all. You can thank Jony Ive and Tim Cook. They're both petty pieces of shit. It's well known that Steve "protected" Forstall while he was alive. Once he was gone they wasted no time in removing him and his legacy.
Incredible Video Greg, nice work!
Thanks!
This is great! Exactly the kind of content that I love to see. Could you make a followup video where you rank every version of macOS (10.0 to 13)? I would watch that over and over
Thanks for the high praise, I have a video about Nvidia and Apple in the works that you’ll probably enjoy. Stick around for a month or two and it’ll drop.
he basically just did.
Great work, thanks for putting this together!
Thanks, working another snow leopard user
as a mac user since circa 2015 and an aspiring retro mac collector, you've perfectly put into words why i have a soft spot for legacy macOS. i bought an M1 mac mini almost two years ago now to replace my 2018 gaming PC (which has now broke) and its been incredibly reliable for me, only kernel panicking a few times, and nearly every time was on beta software. apple silicon is seriously impressive tech ESPECIALLY for the price, but the planned obsolescence is a HUGE concern for me.
one aspect I didn‘t saw you metioning at all is the fact that SnowLeopard was a maintenance Update. No new features to the Enduser except Exchange Support.
All other Changes were similar to those in Mavericks but not in termes of efficiency it was in term of performance and it was a really great experience…
Excuse you. The OP left out a major, major end user feature: Window resizing from any corner or side of the window.
Insightful and informative. Great material and video.
Nice video. My favourite OSes are still Tiger and Snow Leopard. I love using them both, so clean and efficient, a real joy. Sure, I miss Airdrop, but that's ok on old Macs anyway. I'd use Jaguar honestly for the aesthetic, but there just isn't enough app support, and it runs a little slow.
Slight video correction: the Mac Pro 1,1 doesn't officially support Windows 10. None of the classic Mac Pros (2006-2012) officially support Win 10.
Apple doesn’t officially support it, but windows sure does. Just pop in a dvd and watch the installer go brrr…. That was my experience with the 2008 Mac Pro as well, also not bootcamp supported but windows worked fine.
10.6 was a milestone release which I appreciated more once 10.7 came out. 10.6 was a pause on features to polish and streamline. I held many Macs back on 10.6, especially unattended/server or limited use Macs. One 10.6.3 Mac has been running audio 24/7 for 12 years with only a reboot to take it out and clean the dust out every year or two.
I greatly admired the technical improvements with 10.9 and was excited for it, but, it was a nightmare for my case with audio. coreaudiod was hanging and going silent for users of my software. It required a kill command to bring it back and a relaunch of the affected apps using it. It was not fixed until 10.10! It was a very challenging time of uncertainty of whether I could have a reliable software product and stay in business. 10.10 was the first OS to give us AVFoundation support which I believe started on iOS. I was so glad to drop support for 10.9 and amazingly I can still support 10.10 - 13.0 (9 OS releases) with the same build.
10.14 was the next milestone to hold Mac back on, here again appreciated more with the release of 10.15.
Other than that 10.9 experience difference, I agree, that's how we lived through it and see it now in retrospect.
Snow Leopard, Lion and Mountain Lion: a triad was the best
Well made video sir!
Great video. So much great information! Thank you.
Snow Leopard was the last release before Apple exited the server market. And this also ment slowly removing "unix" services/apps under the hood until "server" became an app. And then Apple started the "back to mac" thing to make a Mac look like an iphone, andded the idiotic semi transparent windows etc. So Apple embarked in glitz in the UI which made subsequent releases vfar less "computer".
My teenage 2009 Xserve is still at Snow Leopard and it will be replaced by a Linux box because Apple is no longer in that market. I've been updating some of the open source components (web, mail , php, mysql).
I WAS JUST THINKING of old Mac OS versions this week, and the gift of the OLD WALLPAPERS was the best thing ever for waiting till the end of a video hahaha 💪
Much better than the usual annoying the usual sponsor segment or some doof asking for Patreon money. Although to be fair, I don’t have sponsors so not like I have really a concern :)
You have so many valid points and hit the nail on the head so many times in this vid! As a fellow 7,1 Mac Pro owner I know you shiver over what the future holds for a 5k entry price tag machine.
I bought mine only a month before they announced Apple Silicone. I'm worried about the minimum amount of support given for a device I spent so much money on. I justified it remembering the amount of money I spent on my 5,1 nine years earlier, remembering how much use my 5,1 saw in 9 years, understanding inflation, and realizing hardware of the base model is at a higher level than the entry model 5,1 was in 2010. When I bought it prior to the Apple Silicone announcement I expected to get 7 years support, and maybe 10 years unofficial support.
Apple needs to tread lightly in this territory with the release of the 8,1 and Apple Silicone transition. It would not benefit Apple to burn Mac Pro users as we're the most loyal fan base. We were already treated badly during the 6,1 trash can era. Piss us off and they will forever burn their most technical and loyal users, this time likely for good!
I will be extremely disappointed if I don't get my 7 years out of my 7,1 because they decided to drop support early out of convenience for them. What's the point of spending extra money buying a customizable, upgradeable Mac if you can't own it long enough to get upgrades in before they drop support?!?
If they plan to drop support for the 7,1 early they should be transparent about it when the 8,1 comes out. A hefty trade in incentive for all 7,1 owners would go a long way towards the sting of a short changed cycle. BUT the 8,1 has to be worth transitioning to. A lack luster fenced in upgrade like the 6,1 would be a hard pill to swallow from another angle. (I skipped the 6,1 completely due to lack of PCI expansion and the fact my upgraded 5,1 could keep up with a 6,1) I struggle with how you make an upgradeable Pro level machine with system on a chip architecture outside of what's done with a Mac Studio. What make it a Mac Studio with a couple pci slots for a raid or capture card and call it a day? My eyes will be watching the fall announcement with great anticipation to this answer.
I love your walled garden HOA analogy. I feel like in the last few years my walled house has gotten a smaller yard because it was taken to widen the street through imminent domain. If apple doesn't handle this transition well, I'll have to rethink what future purchases look like with apple if I choose them at all. From grand and long term to minimalistic and year to year.
Another valid point you had was where I was when I jumped into Mac and where we are now as a possible jumping off point. I walked away from Mac and jumped to PC in 93. I bought a 486pc that was cheaper, and had better compatibility with the rest of the world. In 93 Macs were on the decline and files couldn't even be copied between Mac and PC via floppy in a world before everyone had the internet. Mac had Claris Works, PC had WordPerfect. I was fed up. In 06 I was fed up again with Vista and blue screens of death everytime I tried to do real work on my PC restarted. I found out there was more cross compabilty for how disks were read vs the 90s. Apple introduced the 5,1 iMac and it had boot camp! Suddenly i could share files with other people and use windows still, with the bonus of not needing rebuy all my PC software on Mac like I did when I went to PC! And Snow Leopard was an amazing alternative to Vista! I got an 08 white MacBook, then the Mac Pro and I've had dozens MacBooks sense. But now like you said Windows 10 and 11 have come a long way! Are they perfect? No but they're solid for the most part. But Windows is close enough these days for me to make a jump off with amazing horsepower for my dollar. And build quality of many PCs is vastly improved over 16 years ago! Look at Surface and Razer Blade!
Just where does PC hardware land in the next 5 years with the release of Windows on ARM and the success of Mac ARM hardware? We're in a unique transitional point for technology right now. It's hard to know where to be but in the now. I just don't want to buy another 5-6k computer to only be burned by lack of support from the manufacturer.
It’s gonna really rough for us 7,1 owners not knowing the future of our machines. I can see a future where I have a Mac laptop for development and my work stuff and a PC for… content creation.
I never really came from a pc background, my parents had a performa and later a Powercomputing clone, so I never experienced the 486 and pentium eras of PCs. I did have a Pentium M laptop in the mid 2000s during the dark ages for Mac laptops but that’s it. I don’t know how far I’ll ever swing to windows but I need to keep an open mind.
@@dmug my parents had a LC 520. After having some other Macs. That was our last one. We had a neighbor move in down the street that owned one of those PC clone building businesses that were all the rage at the time. I just started middle school and he was nice enough to let me build my computer myself with the oversight of one of his employees.
In the late 90s I actually got a job working for him in high school building computers on weekends, but that was the trail end of the go to a store and have a computer built era. Right before graduation he had to let me go cause business was slow. He couldn't keep up with gateway 2000s eMachines and cheap Compaq machines back then. These cheap machines and his wife getting cancer unfortunately ruined him.
I decided to go a different route from programming, or individual system building. I went with networking! Something I knew wasn't going away and made more sense to me. Once I got permission to drill a hole under the house and I put in that old 10 base T coax cable between mine and my parents computer, I was hooked! I couldn't believe how much faster filter transfers were than building floppies or burning CDs!
Being a network engineer, I've connected tons of technology and devices to my networks. You get to work with it all! And these days I use my Mac pro for large scale network config testing, large scale traffic simulation and I do a lot of windows emulation. Or I'll emulate Linux to represent a server. Not the m1 Mac's strong suit. I love connecting a VM to one physical interface on the Mac Pro and then communicating with another VM running concurrently on my same Mac Pro on the other physical interface with all kinds of lab hardware in between. It's a great way to test connectivity when studying for certifications.
The days of needing a desktop computer are numbered. My Synology NAS does most of my server functions now instead of the cheese grader, and in my post military life I'm trying to get into video editing as well. But heck a MacBook air can even accomplish this task these days. I already own a used Surface Book because I wanted a pen and touch screen and I grab it for most windows things these days. Docks have become much more friendly with Thunderbolt 3. And other than being hit and miss with emulation my 14in MacBook is a solid machine. I'm thinking unless the new 8,1 is SUPER appealing when the 7,1 dies, I might let the traditional tower machine go. I’m also hoarding my 16in Intel MacBook since it’s the last of a breed. I won’t have a second MacBook once it’s no longer supported. Ironically because of Apple’s inflexibility to integrate new technology into MacBooks but the creation of apple silicone technology I have more commuters at once than I ever have before up to this point. I just don't see the upgradeability and customizations that appeal to me with system on a chip design. If you can't upgrades you might as well just work off a laptop. This is most likely where I’ll go in the future baring something that wows or surprises me. 1 Mac laptop, 1 PC laptop and a Synology NAS to handle all my server functions.
I can agree with you I use to be so excited about new macOS releases and I haven’t been very excited for a long time. I also liked Mavericks a lot many memories from my experience with it
There are two releases I'll forever hold near and dear to my heart: Snow Leopard and Mavericks. Used both in my late 2011 MBP (Post SL but works perfectly with 10.6.8 update). Now I use it with Arch Linux for obvious reasons.
awesome video!
Been using Mac for 13 years and I kind of agree with you. The days when we actually had to pay and download the OS. 🙂 The SL was also a great version with great new features. However I remember when the flat design was introduced I was blown away!
Kinda agree about the flat ui I debated removing the flat ui bit as that was more iOS 7 than macOS, but eventually I had to finish this video.
Also, I’ve felt like I’d pay for macOS if it meant we got longer term support but can’t make that deal with the devil.
@@dmug "Also, I’ve felt like I’d pay for macOS if it meant we got longer term support but can’t make that deal with the devil."
Absolutely. That would be my dream!
Anyways, your videos are awesome! I also spend hours reading your website. You seriously invested time into that upgrade guide!
Keep up the good job!
🍺🍺
Great video. Thank you very much.
When Tim Cook took over Apple's priority became emoji genders and shades and product quality took a dive
That wasn’t exactly just Apple, as the Unicode Emoji standards dictates that. Apple probably submitted a few but also so did MS, Google, Facebook, yahoo and anyone maintaining a emoji library.
I can’t imagine that takes away much from development rather any quality dips are conscience choice by apple (like not delaying a launch) with the resources they have.
i went to my locale goodwill & was bumming around. then i went over to the cd's to see what they have & i found a copy of snow leopard. i bought it right then & there
After making this vid, I bought a boxed copy for $10 on ebay but the shipping was another $10, I'm sure you got the better deal .
Let me use it! I don't want to have to spend 100$ ill buy it off you if you want I just really need an OS i can use to start my business.
This was an outstanding video and, I really enjoyed watching it. For myself OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, is the best of the "cat" operating systems. Because like you stated, it came out at a time when Mac desktop systems were the "central hub" for Apple users. Now, the first, second, and last thing out of the mouth of Tim Cook, is always "and with your iPhone ... your air pods, your Apple watch, your iPad, your etc., etc., etc." the new "central hub" for Apple users is the iPhone. Which, is something that, I never plan to own. In 1996, I started using Apple computers and for all systems within my collection that can support it, I always install a copy of Snow Leopard. Also daily, I still enjoy using this vintage operating system with iLife '09. iWorks, '09, MS Office, and for watching and recording HD over the air movies and TV shows (smile...smile).
They need to bring back spaces as it was implemented in Snow Leopard... was the best windows management feature of any OS, EVER!
Amazing review.
My first computer was an old white MacBook. I had it on Snow Leopard for the longest time and didn't upgrade but at some point I had to update to Lion for some iPod compatibility. That basically bricked it it became sooooo slow.
Maybe one of the reasons why Snow Leopard is so revered is because lots of people used it as a child and have nostalgia for it.
But I remember even back when I was younger ppl were always wishing Apple would release another maintanance update that just fixed bugs and made things faster. I think Snow Leopard was even advertised as having "no new features".
(Only half way through the video maybe he's about to mention that)
Tiger, Snow Leopard, and Mavericks will always be the big 3 in my heart. They were the versions of Mac OS X I grew up with, and I loved them to bits. I still use my Mid 2009 Mackbook Air (The last one with the flush design before the 2nd gen re-design) with Mavericks. I just love the design of the hardware, and the software is just perfect. Pure platinum.
Thanks for the wallpapers!
Thanks for watching to the end
Mavericks was what I used on my first Mac. I have a fondness for it.
Great video ! Installed Mavericks on my 2008 macPro, it's still a great OS and I personally love the UI.
ty bro, keep going!
My first Mac was a MacBook Pro mid 2009 with Leopard and Snow Leopard was super fast and light. 10.6 was super optimized and Core 2 duo was a great CPU. Even today with OCLP this Mac can run well enough MacOs Monterrey.
Mavericks forever.. totally agree.. i have the wave as a wallpaper still today
Am I the only one who absolutely loved Vista? Yet at the same time I always wanted a Mac.
Vista was much like XP really took service packs to bring it around. I had a media pc that ran vista and it really seemed run problem free after Vista SP2 or something.
From my perspective, I think the constant pestering for security and people jamming it on old hardware harmed its reputation. it was never able recover from that and followed up by Windows 7 which really was a solid OS and didn’t have significantly higher requirements like Vista did compared to XP.
@@dmug I only upgraded to 7 in 2011, and being a Vista user for 3 years, it was pretty underwhelming, in fact, the tweaked design language was even more basic and bland. Other than that it's still pretty great.
Also, macOS Mavericks is probably the most inconsistent version design wise, like, it came out the same year as iOS 7 yet for some reason it doesn't look alike at all, only some apps got flattened and they look uglier than in Yosemite, yet their icons are still the same, and then the new apps like Maps and iBooks look like total jokes, especially their icons, all this clashed with the skeuomorphic design language of the rest of the OS, and it made transitioning feel not very seamless. Other than that it was probably the best version of macOS I've tried, never owned a Mac, but I've demoed it with my cousin's MacBook Air back in 2014, will never forget it. When I get that 2008 aluminum MacBook, I'm gonna be dual booting Snow Leopard and Mavericks, just because of how fantastic they are.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who HATED Yosemite. Up until that release every OSX release felt like an improvement. 10.10 ruined the UI with its ‘flat’ bullshit ported from iOS. It also introduced so many bugs and design issues.
I’m a software developer and the 10.10 release broke all of our software with crashes and licensing issues. What a nightmare that month was.
I also hate Apple’s ruthless drive to drop ‘legacy’ technology support like X11, PPC, 32bit, HFS/HFS+ and x86 emulation.
They do this purely to force upgrades and drives sales.
I’m a web dev by trade and it mangled my internet connection speeds. Id often 10-15k a second down and I was in the middle of an annoying project for AT&T. Learned my lesson about updating mid project, a reboot would buy me time and I was able to do the mdnsresponder hack replacing DNSresponder which was a life saver.
Also I had issues with certain apps needing updates with Yosemite too which tracks with what you just said.
Pretty dead on the last point. Just really sucks for us end users.
@@dmug Apple yanked a bunch of SSL certificates from the keychain without notice. That caused us the biggest grief as it broke all of our licensing and payments overnight. All these Mac users upgraded and suddenly couldn’t log in.
They also removed an interface font that had been standard since OSX 10.0. This caused our software to fall back to some default font that look awful.
We had to hurriedly re-engineer a lot of products and services. We had to bundle with the app the certificates Apple had removed.
There were also crashes with basic stuff like file dialogs so we had to hack in replacements.
The whole thing was a fucking nightmare requiring lots of late nights and it cost the company a lot.
We almost stopped developing for Mac after that.
@@kirishima638 oof
I've never done Mac dev but have contributed on iOS apps using React Native (yeah yeah, I know web guy) and there's always something being changed that is infinite headaches.
Apple requiring for Apple sign on was certainly an interesting as we worked on a healthcare app, and they supported another sign on service and originally Apple wanted the Apple sign on to be required. Took a back and forth to land on it wasn't required in our case. I don't envy full time Apple-anything developers.
I imagine right now SwiftUI is a hot topic among your team, not looking so great from what I've heard.
@@dmug yep another team is transitioning to Swift. I’m not a fan.
incredible presentation. thank you
Glad people are still watching this, I think I came off harsher on snow leopard than I meant to, I made a video where I installed it on a Mac Pro 2008 a few months ago and got it working on the modern internet.
Can you use OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard in 2023? Nearly 15 years later...
th-cam.com/video/OXRFr8AFC9A/w-d-xo.html
@@dmug yes I watched that one as well. Equally as entertaining and informative. thanks
os x mavericks was my favourite os x release as well! It always seemed so stable, great performance and battery, and the last of the skeuomorphic os design. I used it for years on my early 2013 13” mbp and didn’t want to upgrade to the new design & many bugs
I dont know why so many people love skeumorphism, it always looks tacky and dated compared to clean (and MUCH more user friendly) modern design, of course simplification can go too far but in the case of macOS flat ui is a huge improvement
@@jacob-sh8ec id argue that skeuomorphic designs are much more user friendly because they’re literally imitating real life equivalents, which everyone knows how to use. I think it’s also a big hit with enthusiasts because it has so much more personality and dimensions than the flat and boring minimalistic designs of modern uis. Like when people tear down old buildings with really intricate architecture and design and then put up a modern building that looks like every other modern design and feels/looks lifeless
@@lukey333 flat design is better for usability, you obviously dont look at the safari icon and think about how it looks like a compass so it must be for web navigation, you recognise the shape/colour, flat design is better for this because the icon is clearly defined and quickly recognisable. as far as character thats subjective, some people like skeumorphic design, some people think it looks dated and would prefer clean minimalist icons. same with architecture, personally I prefer modernist and minimalist architecture (which if done right has a lot more thought put into it than youd expect)
@@jacob-sh8ecskeuomorph design is superior. Cope.
For me Mavericks takes the crown, the most beautiful dock & icons ever.
Tiger was my first interaction with OSX on the fabulous Black Macbook.
I loved the experience to install the OS and the secondary CD with additional software.
First of all, excellent and thought provoking video. Personally, I don't think about the "best version of Mac OS, but rather, my "favorite" version. My favorites, from top to bottom, are. Leopard, Mac OS 9, Big Sur, High Sierra, and El Capitan.
I appreciated your shout-out to Leopard as the first modern Mac OS. I have often said the same thing. I too used Panther as my first full time Mac OS. I was very happy with it, and saw no real reason to pay the $120 for Tiger. When Leopard came out, I definitely did. Time Machine, Spaces, and so much more, how could I pass it?
I never used Mac OS 9 in it's heyday, but I gained an appreciation fo rit using Classic on Panther. I picked up an older machine that would run it natively, and I loved it. It was light, fast, and did what it did very, very well. In today's world it is very limited, but it can still run those old games really well, and I use it frequently for just that.
Big Sur was a very solid release when Apple really needed one. It prepared the way for Apple Silicon Macs, and still ran very well on Intel machines. I loved the nature dynamic wallpaper, as well. I have upgraded to Monterey, since eventually, we all have to, but I do miss Big Sur.
High Sierra was the version I most anticipated. It is the one that caused me to jump on the beta channel, to see where it was going. The actual changes were not all that obvious, but APFS was huge, and the tighter integration of the "Apple Ecosystem" was very important.
El Cap is a very solid release. It is about as far back as you can go, run it today, and not feel like you are missing out on modern computing. Use an up to date browser and emsil client, and you really can use this OS today, very easily.
Clearly, if you were to pick the "best OS on this list, it would have to be Big Sur. However, my "favorite" is Leopard. If, somehow, it could be made to function within the ecosystem, I would be very happy using it regularly.
Best and favorite I'd say I'm using interchangeably. as its entirely an OpEd about Apple's walled garden under guise as yet-another-right-to-repair-rant by me.
I came into macs with os x leopard. I was used to linux, but wanted photoshop. Snow leopard was an optimisation on leopard and ran well, but I went on the subsequent releases and didn't think twice about it until I met several users that clinged to snow leopard like windows users to windows 7. Never know when they moved on, though.
I got two mac minis now. a 2012 with user upgradeable ram and disk, and a 2020 m1 with non upgradeable anything. they look almost identical beside the light placement and the ports on the back, both has 16gb of ram but the 2012 can be upgraded to 32. The m1 has a 2tb disk, the 2012 has 512gb but can be upgraded to 4tb if I want to spend twice of what it is worth on it. progress isn't always great.
Snow Leopard came along just after I switched back to a Mac after using windows since 1997. I stopped using Macs in 1997 due to the horrific build quality of Macs at that time, and for a few years I found Win 98, Windows 2000 & Windows XP to be perfectly usable on good hardware.
Switching back to Mac on an Intel Mac and then getting Snow Leopard ( which I bought as an upgrade) was infinitely better than Windows Vista which was terrible. I feel the Snow Leopard era was great, we had decent upgrades in hardware and software and it was an exciting time to be a Mac enthusiast. I should add I stared using Apple with an Apple // back in the 80s.
Yeah, the mid 90s were a rough time for Apple, our family had a PowerComputing PowerCenter (clone). Apple couldn't seem to get a proper OS update and Windows 2k then XP had preemptive multitasking and protected memory and early OS X was rough. There was a brief span even as a full time Mac user I'd argue Windows had the better experience.
OS X was based on the XNU kernel, not FreeBSD. XNU was derived from Mach and was used in NeXTSTEP.
Also one thing I think you missed is that Mac sales went up drastically during the 08-11 period. Many people either upgraded from Leopard, or jumped in with SL, and the update to Lion probably left a lot of people wanting.
Too this day, any questionable OS update, I call a Lion (looking at Ventura here). I skipped 10.7 entirely, and when I got to 10.8, I added in a lot of the things that Apple got rid of; grid spaces, growler (notifications didn't work for me). Pretty sure I managed to disable full screen apps as well. I was still bothered by it though, and ended up skipping everything to High Sierra (which is the last one that ran on my MBP), out of sheer spite for the continuing iOSifcation and locking down Apple seemed to be doing.
remember my first expirence with apple was made with an core i7 920 hackintosh and i still have the snow leopard dvd laying arround.
it was so much a difference between windows that i bought my first mac short after that.. 😌
Snow Leopard is the most recent Mac OS that is able to run PPC apps (via Rosetta). I have it on an old 2009 MBP just for that feature.
It’s sad apple didn’t keep around longer as an optional download. I have it as VM for the rare occasion I need it but also a great point I forgot about.
What made 10.6.8 beloved was it was the last version that had Rosetta.
That was the reason that 1/3 of the user base was still on 10.6.8 when Sierra was released.
Others have pointed that out and I wish I would have mentioned that.
I appreciate your perspective and will not argue with the notion that Mavericks was a great release, but for Apple hardware of a certain vintage and spec, Snow Leopard delivers a subjective experience that I can’t get with any other release. Boot times-even on spinning rust-rival SSD boots of modern OSes. The number of running background services (out of the box) fits in a single window, no scrolling. The drain on resources doesn’t require the admitted innovation Mavericks brought to the table, because it was a significantly lighter OS to begin with. That’s not to say it’s feature superior, it’s not, and I agree that what we’re all saying is we want a more Mac-centric Apple, but I just wanted to offer my perspective as to why I have such a fondness for Snow Leopard all these later. Owning three machines Snow Leopard-based machines that all still function quite well, it’s just unbeatable for my specific use case. I will have to give Mavericks another test run on my SSD equipped machines. Thank you for your work!
My personal favourite Mac OS was also Mavericks. Had it installed on my HP Hackintosh until Big Sur. Currently running Big Sur on that Hackintosh.
My favourite Windows Os is tied between XP and Windows 7.
My favourite OS out of All is Arch Linux.
I hope that Linux support on Apple Arm chips continues to progress. It would allow people to run a modern os long after Apple officially discontinues support.
Thanks for the hack. I'm waiting for more
10.6 was the pinnacle. For programmers there are things improved in later versions but from user point of view it's only downhill from there. Yes, there was a slowdown of the downhill at 10.9 but UX stuff broken in the previous two remained. Oh, and G5 "quad" had no problems whatsoever playing 1080p. That's just nonsense or you had a completely different one than I had 😛
Even though it was 2.5 ghz and had 2 dual core cpus, I don't think a CPU from 2000/2001 could even handle something like 1080p. Most likely you just had a graphics card installed in it.
There was no integrated graphics in those machines. One had to have graphics card installed. But again, the "quad" (2005) had no problems handling 1080p at all, even with the lower specc'd graphics card (there were two options).
Amazing video... Mavericks was such a good OS and - in my opinion - really helped start the transition into the modern Mac era!
Especially since it was pretty inconsistent in terms of design
It's quite interesting to see how much loved Snow Leopard is, it was the OS I entered the Apple Ecosystem with in early 2011, however I never had that many problems with Vista. I kind of stayed on High Sierra for the longest time.
Counter-point to the entire video and a HUGE point you left out: Snow Leopard was the first version of any Mac OS that allowed you to resize windows from ANY corner or side, and not just the bottom right corner. This had previously been a monumental time-consuming pain in the ass and a BAREBONES feature for literally EVERY other OS on the planet dating back to the DOS era. This feature, and this feature alone, turned Mac OS from a silly tech demo for children into a somewhat usable operating system for anyone wanting to migrate from Windows, where we were used to getting actual work done instead of futzing around with the OS all day. This is the one and only reason it is the most-loved OS. It was the rare instance of Apple actually listening to customers and going back on one of their headass decisions, which they never, ever do.
I started with Mac OS 9.2 which was incredible and I'm now on the latest Mac OS 12.6. With that said, I still believe Snow Leopard is/was the best at least for music/G4 computer to Mac Pro and though it wasn't the fastest, I would say it was the most stable. Now, you mentioned Maverick which was really fast and pretty stable. I upgraded late on this one so, I had to pay for it but, was well worth it for the Mac Pro 2009 tower. By the way, The Mac Pro 2009/2010 5.1 towers were thee best period as far as Mac hardware. Anyway, though Maverick really didn't highlight anything, and was a no thrills OS and best for the 5.1 tower, these new OS's and hardware are so powerful that it's crazy. Now, if we can get the stableness of SL or Mav in the next OS Ventura, I would be 100% happy! Great video!
Honestly, the stability of OS X since the transition to macOS naming has been rock solid to me.
I can't remember the last time I had to use time machine to do a restore outside of a HDD dying (2015?). These days, the issues are compatibility related and the rough edges of Apple changing its UI, at least for me.
Also, it helps that I'm running modern hardware too, M1 Max, M1 Pro (work provided) and a Mac Pro 2019 so my perception is from someone with serious hardware
ive installed snow leopard on a 13 inch mid 2012 MacBook Pro and late 2012 Mac mini using a modified mach_kernel
My old white MacBook came with Leopard but Snow Leopard to me was still pretty awesome at the time. It was also the last OS X update that allowed you to freely customize the dock. Which is a shame because I had some really cool dock skins. Mavericks was pretty good too. I started using iPads around the house more often after Mavericks so I can’t say I have much of an opinion of anything after. I had my 2019 MBP but I wasn’t using it much. Especially after getting the M1 iPad Pro.
One of the visiting speakers to my camera club, couldn’t run her Keynote presentation on the club’s MacBook Pro using OS X Yosemite. The only answer I could find was to upgrade to 12 Monterey.
Sounds about correct for Yosemite.
The fact that they shitcanned PPC support so soon is a big part of why I upgraded my personal 16” to an M1 Max even though my 8C intel chip was plenty fast for my personal coding projects. I’m betting by next year or maybe 2024, no more intel support. Got out of it only paying $500 to use the machine for a couple years and I can feel confident that I’ll get the newest MacOS through 2026 at least.
lion and snow leopard were essentially tied is what the article actually said. I’ve read user reports of some lion versions being slower than snow leopard.
I was birthed into my Apple Era way back in the °I Switched° ad campaign with a dual G4 PowerMac and ;OS X 10.2.3 ‘Jaguar’. Coming from Windows and Linux I was absolutely amazed. Happy memories. I distinctly remember the excitement of 10.3 and 10.4. I can’t believe it’s almost twenty years ago now.
I remember not being able to sleep because I was too excited to install Mavericks on VMWare... Good days!
I used Snow Leopard from 2008 to 2020. No kidding, 2020. That's because I kept upgrading my Macbook white 2008 with more RAM and storage. I loved Snow Leopard because it was fast, reliable and extremely stable. I tried Lion, 10.7 (the latest OS supported by the Macbook) in 2010 for a few months, but it was buggy and much slower. I switched back to 10.6 and stack to it for the next 10 years.
That’s impressive as browser support died 2013ish for it, meaning it’d been pretty rough surfing the web.
@@dmug Not really, Chrome dropped support to Snow Leopard in 2016, with version 49: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Google_Chrome_release_compatibility
I loved Mavericks. Even on a iMac7,1 with only two gigabytes it absolutely sung made that computer felt like a brand new machine on Mavericks.
Snow Leopard was actually the first Mac OS I used, it came preinstalled on the first iMac I bought.
I loved those candy bar icons in OSX the aqua look was their best IMHO...
I found a MBA on snow lepoard from 2012, that thing was amazing. also that game center app is so nostalgic
S L is my all time favorite! I can’t tell you how much I miss it!
I used Snow Leopard on a gorgeous white MacBook through University years. I trusted that computer with my life.
Snow Leopard was for sure the best macOS :D
I agree Snow Leopard was the best Operating System (OS) period. Daily, I still use it on some of my vintage Apple computers.
I've BEEEN saying this, Mavericks was amazing!
I loved the look of tiger. I always downloaded a theme pack to keep the look. Right up to El Cap.
My favorite OS is Mavericks which I still use to this day on a 2008 Mac Pro.
Wonderful critique.
Thanks, I have a few more video essays planned, a redux of one of my earliest videos on the history of Apple and Nvidia, that I pulled down as I wanted to redo it for some time, one pertaining to skueomorphism and Apple and one that I'm actively writing on Mac gaming.
Hopefully unique takeaways that aren't just easy criticisms of Apple.
Loved the video. Sorry I saw it a year after you posted it. I am that mac guy that bought Soundjam MP when it was released. Payed $600 for a SCSI CD burner and had a laser printer having bands come to my place and mixing ProTools then burning CD's for them at on the average 2x speed!! and printing CD sleeve artwork then converting them to mp3's as a bonus! - yeah man! Then waited almost a year for the release of OSX and preordered it. It was a toy and was really just good for playing around with what the future might look like, but hung onto OS 9 until Tiger. Tiger was great - skipped Leopard completely and it wasn't until I bought a used unibody Macbook Pro that I had to purchase Snow Leopard- Tiger was no longer supported. Then again skipped Lion, Mountain Lion because they dropped Rosetta and many of the "wash dry and fold" programs that I used were not supported. I Still have and use a Mac Pro 5,1 and yes I do run Snow Leopard on it as well as Sierra, High Sierra, and Mojave. This week I'm going to make that leap beyond the Monterey threshold and probably install Sonoma because Midjourney announced that it will no longer support Mojave. I subscribed to your channel and will be probably be looking for help. Glad your out there doing your thing!
I’m happy people still watch this video since it took more effort than most videos to make.
Yeah, early OS X was weird. I wish I could find my original OS X public beta cd. That’s how into this I was.
@@dmug I'm pretty sure I have one of those in a storage unit with the original box.
I remember people reviewing Snow Leopard when it came out, they were pissed they had to pay anything for it because it felt like a Leopard Service Pack and Apple gave out previous versions of Mac OSX for free and I don't recall which one, I'm assuming Mac OS 10.1 or 10.2 because OSX had a rocky start.
I like Mac OS X snow leopard because it was the last OS X supporting Rosetta (1), and it also was the first version to introduce the Mac App Store since Mac OS X 10.6.6, a lot of people refused to update their computers and I also refused to upgrade just like those with PowerPCs refused to upgrade from tiger to leopard due to its ability to still run an OS 9 layer.
Will always have this deep heart for Snow Leopard since it was the Mac OS that came with my first real Macbook in 2009. It was beautiful, gorgeous and fast. I liked Lion but Mt Lion was bad.
Sad that they got rid of the big cat naming schemes.
Didn't upgrade to Maverick, but to Sierra and High Sierra which are good. Have Big Sur and liked it. Monterey somehow have this bug with USB devices where if it is attached and the machine goes to sleep it would refuse to recognize the device again. Hopefully they fix that.
Tiger and Snow Leopard were absolutely fantastic, I can't speak for Mavericks because I went directly from Snow Leopard to Yosemite, and after Yosemite, I was so sick of the ongoing direction of OS X that I switched to Windows. I still love my old Macs though.
Mavericks undoubtably had the best default wallpaper for any OS ever
I still have my CD for it
No clue if I still have mine, it wasn’t retail, came with my Mac Pro
I also, still have my Snow Leopard CD. In addition, daily I still use OS X 10.6 on some of my Apple vintage desktop and laptop systems (smile...smile).
Great Greg! BTW, Jaguar correctly re-wired is JAG-you-are …
Mavericks was also my favorite Os. It was a truly glorious time.
wow! So interesting, thanks! My first own Mac was an iMac 2013 with OS X Mavericks, and it was so great! Then Yosemite was a disaster in term of stability but brought to the Mac very cool Continuity features I still use everyday. Then I was invited to Apple to participe in their invite-only Apple Seeding program to test macOS versions and have direct link with engineers: it was really cool! Even though El Capitan-Catalina updates weren't the most interesting ones, our group had power to send reports that resulted in things getting fixed or improved, as a result of a single bug report. Then Apple totally rewrote their internal tool to manage bugs, and they don't care about us anymore, AT ALL! Only widely reported issue are sometimes fixed, but we can see stability has decreased dramatically! And part of that is that Apple now relies on customers to do QA testing... but at the same time doesn't really give them any consideration (only issue that an AI determines are widely reported have chances to be seen by engineer... so even widely reported issue that are not classified as such by this broken AI are never seen by engineers... and individual report don't matter anymore...). Apple has gotten from the best company in the world to one of the worst (price increase, lack of stability, lack of reparability, lack of support for the latest macOS versions, ...)
I wish the powerPC version of snow leopard had more support. it works but its so limited..pretty buggy also