Recent behavior by Apple appears to suggest the tech giant may no longer have plans to issue security updates for Snow Leopard, a version of its desktop operating system that is used by nearly one in five Mac users. The Cupertino tech company has not delivered a security update for Snow Leopard, which was released four years ago, since last September, according to ComputerWorld. Since that time, Apple has continued to update other versions of its Mac operating system, including Lion, Mountain Lion and the latest version, Mavericks.
Apple appears to have pulled the plug on support for OS X Snow Leopard, leaving a fifth of Macs vulnerable to attack. Apple hasn’t released a security update for the OS since September, suggesting the company may have finally ended support, as noted by ComputerWorld. Snow Leopard was missing from the latest round of OS X security updates this month, which included fixes for Mavericks as well as older versions Lion and Mountain Lion. It was also left out of a December round of updates that only patched versions of Safari compatible with newer releases of OS X. Snow Leopard was released more than four years ago and remains a popular OS with Mac users, installed on 19% of Macs, according to NetMarketShare stats cited by ComputerWorld.