Mac OS X Snow Leopard Launched 15 Years Ago Today With '0 New Features'

Today marks the 15th anniversary of Apple releasing Mac OS X Snow Leopard, which became available to purchase for $29 on August 28, 2009.

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After advertising Mac OS X Leopard as having "over 300 new features" in 2007, Apple previewed Snow Leopard at WWDC 2008. Notably, during that year's "State of the Union" session, Apple showed a presentation slide that said the update had "0 new features," as Apple opted to focus on under-the-hood performance and stability improvements.

"We've built on the success of Leopard and created an even better experience for our users from installation to shutdown," said Apple's former software engineering chief Bertrand Serlet. "Apple engineers have made hundreds of improvements so with Snow Leopard your system is going to feel faster, more responsive and even more reliable than before."

With Snow Leopard, Apple said it refined 90% of the foundational "projects" that were built into Mac OS X. Apple pitched the update as offering a more responsive Finder app, an improved Mail app that loads emails up to twice as fast as before, up to 80% faster Time Machine backups, and a 64-bit version of Safari that was up to 50% faster than the previous version. Snow Leopard also took up around half as much disk space as Leopard.

You can watch Serlet speak more about Snow Leopard at WWDC 2009 below.

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Top Rated Comments

JWD Avatar
8 months ago
I purchased it, no regrets
Score: 96 Votes (Like | Disagree)
goobot Avatar
8 months ago
Apple needs to do this again across their entire OS line up
Score: 80 Votes (Like | Disagree)
sw1tcher Avatar
8 months ago

After advertising Mac OS X Leopard as having "over 300 new features," Apple previewed Snow Leopard at WWDC 2008. Notably, during that year's "State of the Union" session, Apple showed a presentation slide that said the update had "0 new features," as Apple opted to focus on under-the-hood performance and stability improvements.
Apple seriously needs to do that again with macOS and iOS, IMO.

Every 5th year should be a "0 new features" OS release.
Score: 78 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Andain Avatar
8 months ago
Will never forget, that’s what made me switch to Mac. Had a friend with a polycarbonate MacBook, then bought my Core 2 Duo 11” Air, came with 10.6.8.
It was an absolute shock how stable it was.
Didn’t know back then, but literally the best time to switch.
Score: 50 Votes (Like | Disagree)
swm Avatar
8 months ago
I wish apple would not be so obsessed with releasing a new operating system every year. but apart from the "continuous innovation" it allows them to dig a deeper and deeper pit between the current and the prev gen devices.
Score: 45 Votes (Like | Disagree)
kylelerner Avatar
8 months ago
One of the best OS iterations of all time. Not quite Windows 3.1 to 95, but certainly in the category.
Score: 44 Votes (Like | Disagree)