The Myth of Snow Leopard

Snow Leopard was a refinement of Leopard, and both releases had unusually long durations as the newest release of Mac OS X, totaling 4 years. It then continued getting security updates until late 2013. I can see how people would treat the later point releases of Snow Leopard as a high point for stability because of the years of bug fixes that had gone into the system by then.

> As I age I realize you need to entice the user with more value and service - anew features. It cannot just be quality, but quality is table stakes and the minimum expectation.

I don't know anybody who's switched to Mac because of a feature they added in the latest OS release. It's always because of the better price-performance, the better battery life, or because Windows got too glitchy and annoying. The only new Mac OS feature from the past few years that I can even name off the top of my head is when they finally added window snapping with Sequoia.

When companies use to charge for OS … and the releases were staggered by 3-4 years, I would have agreed.

But when OS upgrades are free, and happen yearly - there’s a different user expectation.

What about the recent macOS releases that seem to prioritize dubious features (Apple Intelligence) that don't add a lot of value (and don't work well), while botching the core fundamentals of UI design and functionality, as with the UI disaster that was Liquid Glass (not to mention the broken window resize region, inconsistent spacing and corner radii, menu items being hidden under the notch, the off-center Windows menu, scrollbars that are either invisible or hard to target, etc.) Liquid Glass was inexcusable as it opposed the fundamental UI principles of clarity and legibility. Apple basically ignored its own design principles.

Snow Leopard was a great experience for me. So much more stable, and the OS felt tighter, like lots of the little wonky things got sorted out. It well deserves its credit and more operating systems should focus on bug fix releases once in a while.

I'm not sure this is a good place to debate my article when the author of the submitted article merely linked to mine.

It appears that Ruben Schade downgraded to 10.5 from 10.6.2, which was still pretty early in the Snow Leopard cycle, then "tried it again a few months later" and downgraded again, until 10.7 Lion (which I personally hated and skipped on my main Mac). Thus, Schade never experienced the later versions of Snow Leopard that everyone remembers fondly.

10.9 my personal “Snow Leopard”. It has most of what made the Aqua era releases good with some QoL/polish improvements. If I could patch it with non-flat scrollbars and 10.5/10.6 2D grid spaces it’d be perfect.