It's not clear whether Wednesday's Snow Leopard update was a one-off -- Apple never comments on security matters -- or an indication that the company plans to support OS X 10.6 for an extended period.

One clue to the latter was the eight-week stretch between the launch of Mountain Lion and yesterday: The previous Apple record for shipping an update after two newer versions of OS X have been in play was in 2007, when Apple delivered the final patches for OS X Panther 19 days after the launch of Leopard.

OS X 10.8.2 (Mountain Lion), OS X 10.7.5 (Lion) and and Security Update 2012-004 (Snow Leopard) can be downloaded from Apple's support site or installed using the operating system's built-in update service.

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at , on or subscribe to . His email address is .

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