I also have a lot of different browsers installed: Camino, Chrome, Firefox, OmniWeb, Opera, Roccat, Safari, and Stainless among them. I have Snow Leopard on my 2007 Mac mini, upgraded with 3 GB of system memory and a fast 320 GB hard drive. You could well count it as the pinnacle of the classic version of OS X (OS X before it started getting iPhone-like features such as “natural” scrolling), and as such there are a lot of good browser options for it. It will definitely do so once OS X 10.11 El Capitan becomes a release product. And with the arrival of 10.10 Yosemite, Mavericks began its inevitable decline – and in coming months it could also fall behind Snow Leopard. Likewise, Mountain Lion share dropped precipitously shortly after 10.9 Mavericks arrived, the first free version of OS X, soon falling below Snow Leopard. Not long after 10.8 Mountain Lion was released, 10.7 Lion dropped below Snow Leopard’s slowly declining level.

They also drop quickly when a new version is released, followed by a slower decline that can go on for years. New versions are adopted quickly on release and grow more slowly, reaching their peak as the next version of OS X arrives – although none has achieved the nearly 85% share that Snow Leopard once had, based on our site traffic. Whether our numbers are representative of worldwide OS X use or not, the trends here are fascinating. We recognize that our audience is more likely to stick with an older OS, whether due to older hardware, software compatibility, or just seeing no need to change.

While OS X 10.6 is now several versions behind, it is hanging in there as one of the most used versions of OS X, as data from our site logs shows in the graph above. OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard remains a Top 3 platform among Mac users even 4 versions later!

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