Snow Leopard
Snow Leopard was released 15 years ago, on August 28, 2009 for $29.
August 28, 2024, marks the 15th anniversary of Mac OS X Snow Leopard, one of the most beloved operating systems in history of the Mac.
Originally previewed at WWDC 2009, Mac OS X Snow Leopard was teased as having "0 New Features", a way of stressing that although there may not be any apparent flashy features evident at first boot, Snow Leopard was a significant under-the-hood overhaul of the Mac OS X operating system.
Bertrand Serlet announcing Snow Leopard has "0 New Features" during the State of the Union address. - Photo Credit: Arstechnica
For example, the OS was rewritten to take advantage of modern 64-bit processing, had a completely rewritten Finder app, and made significant improvements to how the Mac handles memory and multicore processing. The operating system freed up a ton of disk space, made apps run dramatically snappier, and handled multi-threaded processing significantly better than its predecessors.
Culturally, Snow Leopard is held in high regard as it represented a dramatic shift in priorities from features to foundation. It showed that Apple was willing to restrain itself from more consumer-facing flashy new features and instead strengthen its most crucial software.
To celebrate the 15-year anniversary of Snow Leopard, I've taken five of its most iconic wallpapers and upscaled them to fit beautifully on a 6K display. Enjoy! The two Snow Leopard wallpapers are slight modifications - the first was the original while the second is was the production version that shipped and has tweaks to the face and lighting.
Image Credit: Apple.
