Snow Leopard is the best OS update Apple has released in the past 25 years. I ran it for as long as possible, and every OS release since then has been a disappointment of bugs, feature removal, and stupidity.

I ran it for a while on my late 2011 MBP, unfortunately, I got too used to the features of Lion and later, that even with programs to update the workflow didn’t cut it.

My favorite release of the Aqua UI, I miss the colorful sidebars, the custom skeomorphic UI on some programs which gave it a distinctive aura, like custom tailored to each function but still belonging in the system. Font rendering was also absurdly good on a crappy 13’ HD display and since Yosemite it got a bit worse.

Stability wise it was definitely a rock solid release, at least, in the later stages of its main support where most bugs were ironed out. Few have come close to the built like a tank feeling, Mavericks was the Snow Leopard to the Lion and Mountain Lion releases.

And the damn intro video made you feel like home, since then they’ve all felt like going to the doctors office, no matter how relatable they try to make it pretty colors, it still feels dull and boring.

They should pull a Snow Leopard style release, keep a single version for a few years whilst they iron out the bugs and slowly work on a new version instead of releasing every year what are essentially very similar systems that kill support for the oldest supported models of a year in the previous version. Snow Leopard had a few more years of 3rd party support even after Apple was done with it and the community loved it.