After this, no security updates will be provided. Up until October 2021, we were updating affected users with critical security updates through the Firefox ESR channel, to help retain the best possible security. Unsupported operating systems do not receive security updates, have known exploits and can be dangerous to use, which makes it difficult to maintain Firefox on those versions.Ĭan I still browse safely with Firefox on OS X 10.9, 10.10 or 10.11?
Apple made the last security update applicable to OS X 10.11 available in July 2018. Why has Firefox ended support for OS X 10.9, 10.10 and 10.11 users?Īlthough Apple does not have a public policy governing security updates for older OS X releases, its practice is to support the most recent three releases. Affected users will not receive any further security updates. This was done to provide security updates until the final Firefox 78 ESR update (version 78.15.0esr) was released on October 5, 2021. These users were moved to the Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR) channel by an application update. This story, "Mozilla might drop Firefox support for Mac OS X 10.Firefox Mac OS X 10.9, 10.10 and 10.11 users move to Extended Support Releaseįirefox version 78 was the last supported Firefox version for Mac users of OS X 10.9 Mavericks, OS X 10.10 Yosemite and OS X 10.11 El Capitan. Mozilla's support policy is to support a browser with security patches for six months after its successor is released.Īpple has said it intends to ship Mac OS X 10.6, aka Snow Leopard, this summer Apple typically cuts off support for the operating system two steps behind a new release within several months of a new debut. Firefox 3.5, which missed a Beta 4 ship date last week, will support the same versions. "But a huge number of apps seem to be 10.5-only these days anyway, so we're just another tree in the forest."Ĭurrently, Firefox 3.09 supports Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5.
"Suffice to say, I will be very disappointed if I can't upgrade to Firefox 3.6 or Firefox 4 next year," countered Gordon Hemsley.Įven though he recommended dropping 10.4 support, Connor acknowledged that doing so will irk some Firefox fans. Not everyone is keen on the idea, however.
Connor was the one who jump-started the conversation earlier this month about dropping support for Windows 2000 and versions of Windows XP prior to Service Pack 2 (SP2).
"Overall I think there's a lot of technical reasons why 10.5 should be a new baseline, and the number of users is small and diminishing in any case, so I definitely support this from the Firefox side," said Michael Connor, one of the company's software engineers, later in the discussion thread. "One major benefit of moving to 10.5 as a minimum is using 10.5+ APIs without runtime detection and build-time SDK trickery," said Josh. But his most compelling argument, based on the response it got from other developers, was that dropping 10.4 will let Mozilla use APIs (application programming interfaces) available only in Leopard and later. The company will then start working on the Gecko 1.9.2 engine, which would power Firefox.next.Īlthough Josh said that 36% of the Mac OS X users running Firefox are still on Tiger, he added that that number was sure to drop over the next year-and-a-half.
Mozilla is currently working on Gecko 1.9.1, the engine that powers Firefox 3.5, which is slated for final release before the end of this quarter. Our 10.4 support would end a little over 3 years after the last copy of 10.4 shipped," said a Mozilla developer identified only as "Josh." Apple debuted Mac OS X 10.4 in April 2005, then supplanted it with 10.5, aka Leopard, in October 2007. "If we drop support for 10.4 in Gecko 1.9.2 then 10.4 users will be supported until approximately Q1 2011 via Firefox 3.5.