Earlier this year, one of the biggest pieces of technology news that IT departments needed to be aware of was Microsoft ending support for the 13-year-old Windows XP operating system. Despite a year of forewarning, the popular platform among PC users is still in use by many companies, which are now scrambling to upgrade to a more modern system that is still receiving security updates.
While this doesn't directly affect Mac users, a similar situation has developed with OS X Snow Leopard. According to an article from Computerworld, the 2009 operating system has quietly been removed from the list of platforms that Apple is releasing patches for. The last security update that included Snow Leopard was in September 2013, and since then four major updates have been released for Apple operating systems and Snow Leopard has not been included.
This has caused a number of users to finally jump ship. The article reports that from March to May, Snow Leopard lost 3.8 percentage points of its share of all Mac operating systems. That is the largest three-month decline for Snow Leopard since August through October 2012, which is when OS X Mountain Lion was released.
This puts the total number of Macs that went online in May at an estimated 15 percent. The current trend, paired with a new operating system on the horizon, creates a forecast where usage will fall under 10 percent by November and below 5 percent by March 2015.
Any company that is using Mac computers needs to make sure it knows the importance of using a modern operating system that is still receiving updates. With the help of an Apple support service, any company will be able to audit their current systems and gain a hand is an upgrade is needed.
