Snow Leopard

Mac OS X Snow Leopard (version 10.6) is the seventh major release of Mac OS X, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. Unlike those of previous versions of Mac OS X, the goals of Snow Leopard were improved performance, greater efficiency and the reduction of its overall memory footprint. Much of the software in Mac OS X was extensively rewritten for this release in order to take advantage fully of modern Macintosh hardware. New programming frameworks, such as OpenCL, were created, allowing software developers to use graphics cards in their applications. This is also the first Mac OS release since System 7.1.1 that does not support Macs using PowerPC processors, as Apple now intends to focus on its current line of Intel-based products. As support for Rosetta was dropped in OS X Lion, Snow Leopard is the last version of Mac OS X that is able to run PowerPC-only applications. Snow Leopard is the last release of Mac OS X to support the 32-bit Intel Core Solo and Intel Core Duo CPUs.