Unfortunately, nobody knows for certain how long Apple will continue to release security patches or XProtect updates for any given operating system.Īlthough Microsoft publicly announces its support timetables for Windows, and the Ubuntu Linux company Canonical does likewise, Apple has never given any official word to the public regarding how long each version of Mac OS X or iOS will continue to receive security updates, and Apple consistently ignores press inquiries about when levels of support will be dropped for its operating systems. Although the same could be said for iTunes updates, Apple has a financial incentive to keep iTunes updated: the iTunes Store and the iOS App Store, both of which are accessible via the iTunes Mac app, bring in a lot of revenue for Apple.

Development of OS patches costs Apple money and developer resources. However, these will likely be just about the only things Apple continues to update for Lion over the next year. Meanwhile, the now three-generations-old Lion operating system is currently still getting both XProtect and iTunes updates. That’s not a good thing, because not only does it mean there won’t be any more security patches from Apple, but many third parties have already stopped releasing updates compatible with these operating systems as well.įor now, the only security-related update Apple is still releasing for Snow Leopard is its XProtect “Safe Downloads List,” but there’s no way of knowing for sure how much longer Apple will continue to update it. Still older Macs can’t even be upgraded to Lion, meaning they’ll be stuck with Snow Leopard (version 10.6.8) or some earlier version of OS X. In recent history, Apple has only patched operating system vulnerabilities for the current and two previous versions of OS X. However, some Macs are still limited to Lion (version 10.7.5), which is evidently no longer getting security patches now that Yosemite has been released the lack of a Lion version of the recent Security Update 2014-005 is a harbinger of things (not) to come. This means that if your Mac was compatible with Mavericks or even its predecessor Mountain Lion, you’ll be able to upgrade to Yosemite.

Like last year with the release of Mavericks, Apple chose to continue supporting all the same Macs as the previous release of the operating system. Apple recently released a new version of its Mac operating system, OS X Yosemite (version 10.10).

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