Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.9 to Bring iCloud Support?

Monday August 29, 2011 10:13 am PDT by Eric Slivka

Apple appears to be preparing a 10.6.9 update to Mac OS X Snow Leopard in order to provide compatibility with the company's upcoming iCloud service. The following notice appeared in one developer's .Mac preference pane in Tiger after he had upgraded his MobileMe account to iCloud.

According to the notice, users will have to upgrade to a minimum of an as-yet unreleased Mac OS X 10.6.9 in order to sync select content via iCloud.

You will no longer be able to sync with this machine because you've upgraded to iCloud.

iCloud requires a computer running Mac OS X Snow Leopard v10.6.9 or later for Contacts, Calendars, and Bookmarks.

Apple so far has only been testing iCloud for OS X Lion with developers, regularly pushing out new builds of OS X 10.7.2, iCloud software and Photo Stream-enabled iPhoto 9.2 as it moves toward a public launch of iCloud.

Apple has been quiet about absolute minimum system requirements for iCloud, although it notes on its promotional pages that some features will require OS X Lion.

Some features of iCloud require iOS 5 on iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPod touch (3rd and 4th generation), iPad, or iPad 2, or a Mac computer with OS X Lion or a PC with Windows Vista or Windows 7 (Outlook 2007 or 2010 recommended).

Apple has already confirmed that syncing of Mac Dashboard widgets, keychains, Dock items, and System Preferences are not making the transition from MobileMe to iCloud for any users, but if the alert notice being delivered to iCloud users on Mac OS X Tiger is correct, it seems that at least minimal iCloud functionality may be coming to Mac OS X Snow Leopard in the form of a full maintenance release.

Top Rated Comments

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hlfway2anywhere

23 months ago

Snow Leopard does not have a .Mac preference pane.

It does have a MobileMe pane. So what is this screenshot real from?

Read. The. Article.

Rating: 16 Positives

shartypants

23 months ago

For users who have macs that can't run Lion, this is good news. I'm sure Apple realizes there are enough of these users to not leave them totally behind.

Rating: 11 Positives

cvaldes

23 months ago

I am not moving to Lion until it has Rosetta.

You will never upgrade OS X then.

Snow Leopard is the end of the line for you.

Rating: 11 Positives

Pegamush

23 months ago

wow, so the only reason people would want to switch to lion, will be in snow leopard too. sounds good to me.

Rating: 10 Positives

Biolizard

23 months ago

Snow Leopard does not have a .Mac preference pane.

It does have a MobileMe pane. So what is this screenshot real from?

RTFA. It says it's from Tiger.

What about those on Leopard (PPC Users)

I mean, why not support that, and Snow Leopard? Leopard was the last release for PPC, and SL was the last fore 32bit Core Duo, and Core Solo machines.

PPC is dead, dude. Just let it go.

Edit: And I'm not saying that just to be an arsehole. Lots of OS code was rewritten between Leopard and SL. The Lion implementation of iCloud can almost certainly share most of its code with SL; the same might not be true of Leopard.

Rating: 9 Positives

FSMBP

23 months ago

Good news considering Apple initially said iCloud wouldn't support its barely 2 year old OS (Snow Leopard) but is supporting Vista (which is competitor's 4+ years old).

Hope it's true about Snow Leopard!!

Rating: 8 Positives

andiwm2003

23 months ago

this "no Keychain syncing" kills me. WTF???

Rating: 6 Positives

g-boac

23 months ago

Why in the world aren't Preferences, Widgets, Dock, and Keychains being synced?? These are some of the most fundamental features associated with keeping computers in sync, and in meeting the true intent of iCloud - that any computer you have is a "device", equivalent to any other device you own, and that they stay in sync with each other rather than you needed to spend all your time managing your devices and their content.

This is a step away from that vision. What would it take for Apple to change? Or at least offer those services as paid premium options?

Mark

Rating: 6 Positives

alansky

23 months ago

The Apple notice needs one correction, imho. It should read: "You will no longer be able to sync with this machine because you've downgraded to iCloud."

Rating: 6 Positives