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Snow Leopard users: Just try to pry this from my cold, dead hands

November 7, 2012 03:57 PM ET

Both readers were referring to the moves Apple made last year in Lion, and expanded this year with Mountain Lion, to bring elements of iOS, the operating system that powers iPhones and iPads, to Macs.

In October 2010, when former CEO Steve Jobs introduced Lion, he put it plainly: ""Mac OS X meets the iPad," he said.

Still others objected to Lion and Mountain Lion on more practical grounds. "Lion was the worst thing Apple ever put out," asserted Jeffrey Martin.

"It's perfectly simple," said Clive Sweeting. "Lion and Mountain Lion haven't brought anything that we need and take away things many of us do [need]."

According to Net Applications, 31% of all Macs that went online during October ran Snow Leopard, about the same percentage as relied on Lion. Both were more popular than Mountain Lion or Leopard, which powered 26% and 9% of all Macs, respectively.

Meanwhile, Windows XP -- at 11 years and counting, more than three times older than Snow Leopard -- ran 44% of all Windows PCs last month.

Some griped about the fast pace of Apple's upgrades, now slated for annual release, mimicking the "upgrade fatigue" that not only affects Windows users, but has been cited by analysts as a major reason why enterprises, just finished with or even still in the middle of, their upgrades to Windows 7, are unlikely to migrate to the new Windows 8.

"It's a trend in general that people just aren't upgrading as much as they have in the past," said a commenter identified as "Patty O'Furniture" on Monday. "Just as some folks never left XP because it worked well for them, same goes for [Snow Leopard]. Why re-invent the wheel if you don't have to? Why upgrade just to upgrade, especially if it breaks something that works?"

covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at Twitter @gkeizer, on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed Keizer RSS. His email address is gkeizer@computerworld.com.

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