As a result of the low price, initial sales of Snow Leopard were significantly higher than that of its predecessors. On August 28, 2009, it was released worldwide, and was made available for purchase from Apple's website and its retail stores at the price of US$29 for a single-user license. Snow Leopard was publicly unveiled on June 8 at the 2009 Worldwide Developers Conference. 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.

New programming frameworks, such as OpenCL, were created, allowing software developers to use graphics cards in their applications. Much of the software in Mac OS X was extensively rewritten for this release in order to take advantage fully of modern Macintosh hardware. Addition of new end-user features was not a primary consideration: its name was intended to signify its goal to be a refinement of its predecessor, Mac OS X Leopard. Unlike previous versions of Mac OS X, the goals of Snow Leopard were improved performance, greater efficiency and the reduction of its overall memory footprint.