Snow Leopard was a version of Mac OS X released in 2010. It was billed by Apple as having “0 new features”, focusing on refining the system, improving efficiency, and fixing bugs. Those of us using Macs at the time welcomed the news after living with updates that seemed to break as many things as they introduced.

The idea of a *Snow Leopard* release—one that prioritizes stability over new features—has escaped containment among the Apple crowd. I’ve seen everything from Linux distro to phone updates referred to as Snow Leopard releases, when their vendors cite stability and bug fixes over new features. Likewise, people plead with their vendors for a Snow Leopard release when they feel quality has slipped.

The reality was a bit different. I wrote at the time that this could be the first time I’ve ever downgraded an Apple OS. I’m downgrading the Snow Leopard partition on my trusty old Core Duo 2006 Mac Book Pro back to Leopard, and while I’m at it, I’m finally upgrading the Free BSD partition to 8.0! I kept waiting for updates to fix the severe stability problems in the Finder, my FireWire 800 Express Card and my iMovie HD plugins, but I’ve decided to give up for now.

Jeff Johnson has a great post discussing all the problems Snow Leopard introduced and had to have patched. It was a mess. Still, whether Snow Leopard really was this bastion of stability and polish, the myth surrounding its development and stated purpose obviously resonates today.