Snow Leopard Mac OS X 10.6 was superseded by Lion OS X 10.7 in 2011 which in turn was replaced by Mountain Lion in 2012.

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. Addition of new end-user features was not a primary consideration: its name was intended to signify its goal to be a refinement of the previous OS X version, Leopard.

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.