How Snow Leopard became synonymous with reliability

In some ways, the narrative is out of Apple's hands. The myth of Snow Leopard is bigger than life, a cultural reference rooted in nostalgia. OS X Lion succeeded 10.6.8 in July 2011 - closing in on 7 years ago. At this point, millions of Mac users have never even used Snow Leopard, and can't attest to its reliability.However, a kernel of truth persists underneath the mythology. Improvements to iOS and macOS, no matter how small, contribute to a better experience for everyone. Fixing bugs might not be as marketable as shiny new Animoji or a fresh design, but maintenance can only be deferred so long. If Apple can knock stability out of the park in 2018, maybe the legend of Snow Leopard can finally be put to rest.

There's a tendency for people to fondly look back upon older releases, whether warranted or not. Since I switched away from the Mac before Snow Leopard came out, and was a fervent Mac user during the PowerPC days, my personal Snow Leopard is Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, which I still consider my personal best Mac OS X release. Mac OS X is obviously not alone in this; Linux and Windows users will also have their favourite older releases after which supposedly everything "went downhill".

It's just human nature.