Apple Drops Snow Leopard Security Updates, Doesn't Tell Anyone

Freshly Exhumed writes "As Apple issued an update for Mavericks, Mountain Lion, and Lion yesterday, Snow Leopard users have not seen a security update since September, 2013. This would not be noteworthy if Apple, like a host of other major software vendors, would clearly spell out its OS support policies and warn users of such changes, but they have not. Thus, the approximately 20% of Mac users still running Snow Leopard now find themselves in a very vulnerable state without the latest security updates."

Comments

False

[BasilBrush]

This update had one security fix. The fix for the recent SSL bug. This bug did not affect OSX Snow Leopard or earlier, therefore this update is not needed.

It's not at all a sign that Apple no longer supports Snow Leopard.

Re:False

[ReeceTarbert]

This update had one security fix. The fix for the recent SSL bug. This bug did not affect OSX Snow Leopard or earlier, therefore this update is not needed.

Right so far...

It's not at all a sign that Apple no longer supports Snow Leopard.

But very wrong about this one. This table says that OS X Mavericks is indeed a security update for OS X v10.6.8 and later (18th row in the table). Also, the issue has been discussed before

RT.

Is anyone actually stuck on Snow Leopard?

[ZorinLynx]

Are there Macs that can run Snow Leopard but cannot run Lion?

My 2006 Mac Pro 1,1 supports Lion, and it's one of the oldest Intel Macs. I don't think there's many people "stuck" on Snow Leopard; they should be able to upgrade to Lion and get security updates. Apple has historically only supported the current and previous versions of OS X. Basically, Lion users are getting unexpected support right now, and I think it's because of the large installed base that can't run anything newer than Lion.

Re:Is anyone actually stuck on Snow Leopard?

[linguae]

Lion requires a Core 2 Duo or newer processor. Some of the early Intel Macs from 2006 have 32-bit Core Duo processors (like my MacBook), and I believe there was even a 32-bit Core Solo Mac Mini. These Macs can't run Lion.

Re:Is anyone actually stuck on Snow Leopard?

[DdJ]

Are there Macs that can run Snow Leopard but cannot run Lion?

Yes, and my house has two of them. Snow Leopard was the last version of the OS that supported 32-bit processors.

We've got a MacBook Pro and Mac Mini in our house with 32-bit processors. They're still perfectly adequate machines for light usage, in terms of performance, but they won't run any MacOS newer than Snow Leopard at all.

(What's hilarious to me is, they can run Windows 8.1. I'll probably end up putting either Windows or Ubuntu on them before too much longer.)

Snow Leopard is also the last version of the OS to support executing PowerPC binaries under the Rosetta engine, and some people keep it around for that reason. (Example: it's the last version of MacOS that will still play the MacOS version of Diablo 2, which, while complied for OS X, was never compiled for Intel processors.)

Re:Is anyone actually stuck on Snow Leopard?

[oogoliegoogolie]

Snow Leopard is the last great version of OSX so I'm not surprised people still choose to use it. It looked nice-everything wasn't low contrast dark grey-on-light grey, performance was snappy, sure seemed more stable than Mavericks, and didn't suffer from Apple's failed 'let's fill OSX with useless IOS features that have no place on the desktop' experiment.
OSX has steadily gotten worse since SL in design, usability, and reliability, and I still have two older machines that run it.

Re:Snow Leapard: Rosetta

[ssam]

Libreoffice supports Appleworks documents. Maybe she could migrate.

not so much machine, but software

[Cmdr-Absurd]

Folks stick to SL for basically 3 reasons:

1. They prefer the SL interface to the more recent offerings.
2. They want/need to run 3rd party software that fails to run under later versions (PPC apps in particular -- Rosetta was dropped in LIon)
3. Apple apps that were dropped -- such as Podcast Producer in the server version.

Re:Is Snow Leopard vulnerable?

[carlhaagen]

Correct, it's "only" in OS X 10.9 and the latest iOS - OS X 10.8.5 and earlier are unaffected.

Re:Snow Leapard: Rosetta

[DdJ]

Libreoffice supports Appleworks documents. Maybe she could migrate.

To my surprise, so does iWork. I was able to open up a bunch of my old AppleWorks documents and spreadsheets in Pages and Numbers.

Re:Is Snow Leopard vulnerable?

[Anonymous Coward]

Incorrect. The bug affects OS X 10.7 and later and iOS 6 and later.

Re:Inaccurate the Security update fixes a ton of i

[Anubis IV]

The last time Apple sold a Mac that couldn't upgrade to 10.7 was back in 2007, when they discontinued their final 32-bit Mac. Apple is not Microsoft, and if you look back at support life cycles, you'll see that they've already provided support for 10.6 longer than they typically do, even releasing security updates for 10.6-compatible software as recently as last month. It also continues to get updates to XProtect, OS X's built-in anti-malware tool.

If you're still running 10.6 for some reason, your computer is either a low-end one from at least 7 years ago, or you've made an intentional choice to remain on 10.6 for some reason (likely because it was the last release that could run Rosetta, OS X's tool for running PowerPC apps), in which case you knew what you were getting yourself into when you chose not to upgrade.

Re:All right, then

[MachineShedFred]

Good thing that they provide a tool inside the Mavericks installer to create a bootable USB stick, eh?

sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/USB_stick_to_format --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app --nointeraction

If Terminal.app isn't your thing, there are several no-cost options with a GUI that you can download that invoke that command.