14 DAY TRIAL // Yesterday, Mozilla announced the end of Firefox support for Apple customers using Mac OS X versions 10.6, 10.7, and 10.8. The cutoff date is August 2016.
Mozilla says it took this step following Apple's decision to end support for these OS X versions as well.
Apple released Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) in August 2009, Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) in July 2011, and Mac OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) in July 2012. Apple announced the end of official support for Snow Leopard in February 2014, for Lion in October 2014, and for Mountain Lion in December 2014.
Now, Mozilla is saying that, after August 2016, Firefox versions running on these operating systems will no longer receive new features or security updates.
Firefox ESR (Extended Support Release) will continue to support these three OS versions until mid-August 2017, when it will also stop delivering new features or security updates.
At the start of the month, Google also pulled the plug on Google Chrome for OS X 10.6, 10.7, and 10.8, along with Windows XP and Vista.
According to statistics at the end of October 2015, none of the aforementioned OS X versions had a market share above 10% among Mac users. The biggest chunk belonged to Snow Leopard, but most Mac users already started migrating to Mavericks (10.9), Yosemite (10.10) and El Capitan (10.11).
"Mozilla strongly encourages our users to upgrade to a version of OS X currently supported by Apple. Unsupported operating systems receive no security updates, have known exploits, and are dangerous for you to use," Mozilla advised customers yesterday.