Snow Leopard is fondly remembered by many longtime Mac users, both because it was a remarkably refined release and because it was the last version produced before Apple really started porting iOS features over to the Mac. Five new versions of OS X have been released since then, but NetApplications data says that some five percent of the total Mac userbase continues to soldier on with version 10.6.

Some of those people will be using Macs that aren't compatible with newer versions of OS X, and others will be sticking around because of their personal preferences (or spite, or stubbornness). Either way, if you're still running 10.6, fire up your software updaters for the first time in years because Apple has just issued a small update to "ensure future compatibility with the Mac App Store."

This doesn't mean that Snow Leopard is suddenly supported again. Rather, it allows Apple to continue offering modern OS X versions to the Snow Leopard users whose Macs can run newer versions. You can upgrade directly from Snow Leopard to any newer version of OS X, including the current El Capitan, and the Mac App Store is the main delivery method for those upgrades.

If you can upgrade and you don't have some niche piece of software or hardware that won't work under newer OS X versions, at this point you probably should. Applications are leaving 10.6 behind and the platform hasn't received a security update in well over two years. It's time.