10 ms·

As I recall, there were plenty of legitimate user gripes when the very first iteration of Snow Leopard (10.6.0) was released. But by the time of the very last p

by gord288 2mo ago

As I recall, there were plenty of legitimate user gripes when the very first iteration of Snow Leopard (10.6.0) was released. But by the time of the very last point-release (10.6.11?), the OS was rock-solid. It was only after all the initial bugs were ironed out, that Snow Leopard achieved the legendary status that it has enjoyed ever since. The blogger doesn’t take this factor into account.

cosmic_cheese 2mo ago
Mavericks played out similarly as far as I can recall. Earlier releases had issues but by the last minor update it was quite solid. 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.
kccqzy 2mo ago
It was 10.6.8 v1.1. They didn’t want to increment the version number so they made a version number on top of a version number.
- frollogaston 2mo ago
  That number 10.6.8 is burned into my brain because I was on that release for so long.
snowwrestler 2mo ago
This is true, but it’s also true of many other OS X and MacOS releases over the years. You’ve definitely hit on the core of the issue with the Snow Leopard myth, though: comparing the final battle-hardened bug-patched version of an OS, to a newly released version. Seems like “Snow Leopard” always gets trotted out whenever someone is unhappy with the latest release.
- bitwize 2mo ago
  See also: Windows XP. Upon release it was a security/stability CF. Today there are retrocomputing forums dedicated primarily to it. What they are gazing rose-coloredly back on is likely Windows XP SP3, not how the OS was upon its release.
  - frollogaston 2mo ago
    Because it was followed by garbage that didn't get taken out until 7, which was soon after followed by permanent forced garbage.
    - delta_p_delta_x 2mo ago
      Vista wasn't garbage. In fact, Vista and 7 precisely parallel Leopard and Snow Leopard both in timelines and in release quality—a somewhat rushed, haphazard release of a new OS with tons of new features, many of which were considerably more resource-intensive than the previous release. 7 was more or less Vista SP3. The design language didn't even change except the Start bar. People had bad experiences on Vista because they tried to run Windows Aero on 2001 hardware, and hardware vendors for once strong-armed MS into certifying their half-decade-old hardware as 'ready for Vista'.
      - frollogaston 2mo ago
        I had a brand new PC that came with Vista on it, it was terrible. Not just slow but also BSODs and bad UI. School PCs were higher end than mine but also had BSODs.
        ndiddy 2mo ago
        The BSODs were largely because Vista changed the driver API so everybody had to write new drivers. I remember seeing an article saying that Microsoft's telemetry showed that ~30% of all Vista BSODs were caused by the nVidia graphics driver. Windows 7 came out a few years later with the same driver API, so by then everybody had gotten most of the kinks worked out of their drivers.

by gord288 2mo ago

cosmic_cheese 2mo ago

Mavericks played out similarly as far as I can recall. Earlier releases had issues but by the last minor update it was quite solid. 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.

kccqzy 2mo ago

It was 10.6.8 v1.1. They didn’t want to increment the version number so they made a version number on top of a version number.

frollogaston 2mo ago
That number 10.6.8 is burned into my brain because I was on that release for so long.

snowwrestler 2mo ago

This is true, but it’s also true of many other OS X and MacOS releases over the years. You’ve definitely hit on the core of the issue with the Snow Leopard myth, though: comparing the final battle-hardened bug-patched version of an OS, to a newly released version. Seems like “Snow Leopard” always gets trotted out whenever someone is unhappy with the latest release.

bitwize 2mo ago
See also: Windows XP. Upon release it was a security/stability CF. Today there are retrocomputing forums dedicated primarily to it. What they are gazing rose-coloredly back on is likely Windows XP SP3, not how the OS was upon its release.
- frollogaston 2mo ago
  Because it was followed by garbage that didn't get taken out until 7, which was soon after followed by permanent forced garbage.
  - delta_p_delta_x 2mo ago
    Vista wasn't garbage. In fact, Vista and 7 precisely parallel Leopard and Snow Leopard both in timelines and in release quality—a somewhat rushed, haphazard release of a new OS with tons of new features, many of which were considerably more resource-intensive than the previous release. 7 was more or less Vista SP3. The design language didn't even change except the Start bar. People had bad experiences on Vista because they tried to run Windows Aero on 2001 hardware, and hardware vendors for once strong-armed MS into certifying their half-decade-old hardware as 'ready for Vista'.
    - frollogaston 2mo ago
      I had a brand new PC that came with Vista on it, it was terrible. Not just slow but also BSODs and bad UI. School PCs were higher end than mine but also had BSODs.
      - ndiddy 2mo ago
        The BSODs were largely because Vista changed the driver API so everybody had to write new drivers. I remember seeing an article saying that Microsoft's telemetry showed that ~30% of all Vista BSODs were caused by the nVidia graphics driver. Windows 7 came out a few years later with the same driver API, so by then everybody had gotten most of the kinks worked out of their drivers.