On August 28, 2009, Apple released Mac OS X 10.6, better known as Snow Leopard — an operating system update that broke from the usual Apple playbook. Instead of piling on flashy new features, Apple spent the release cycle refining what was already there, reworking more than 90% of the system’s underlying projects for speed, stability, and efficiency. It shipped for just $29, a bargain even by 2009 standards, and it actually shrank the OS footprint, freeing up to 7GB of disk space on most Macs.
Snow Leopard mattered more than its modest price tag suggested. It was the first Mac OS to drop support for older PowerPC-based Macs entirely, committing fully to Intel processors, and it quietly retired AppleTalk, the pioneering networking protocol that had connected Macs since the 1980s. Under the hood, Apple introduced Grand Central Dispatch to make better use of multicore processors and added OpenCL to offload graphics-style computing to the GPU — both technologies that shaped how Mac software was built for years afterward. It was also the first desktop OS with built-in Microsoft Exchange support, letting Mac users handle corporate email, calendars, and contacts natively for the first time.
Also born on this day: Elon Musk, the entrepreneur behind Tesla and SpaceX, was born on August 28, 1971 — a reminder that this date has more than one entry in tech’s timeline.
Source: Apple Newsroom, This Day in Tech History
Daily Tech History is a running series looking back at notable moments in technology on this date.
