Is Apple done supporting Snow Leopard and 19% of Macs?

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.

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Snow Leopard’s omission was highlighted this week when Apple issued an update for a major security hole known as “Goto Fail.”

ComputerWorld points out that Snow Leopard was also left in the dust in December, when Apple sent out an update for numerous versions of Safari. The company did not update Safari 5.1.10, which is the most recent version of the Internet browser that is available for Snow Leopard users.

The most popular version of Mac OS X is Mavericks, which was released in October and is used by 42% of Mac computers, according to ComputerWorld, which cited Web analytics firm Net Applications. However, Snow Leopard remains a popular version of the operating system with 19% of Apple computers running the system.

One reason for that is because Snow Leopard is the last version of Mac OS X to support programs built for the PowerPC processor, meaning users who update their machines from Snow Leopard to a newer version of Mac OS X will not be able to use programs designed for that processor.

Apple declined to comment when asked if it is no longer supporting Snow Leopard.

If the company is done supporting Snow Leopard, then users of the system should consider updating their software or buying a new computer as to not put their files at risk of a security breach.

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