I did anticipate some off-beat replies when I made my original post but not quite so many comments!
First off, thanks to those who pointed out this update is available for Mountain Lion. I must have misread that.
Second, Mavericks is a 5.7GB file. In the real world, away from concrete cities, that is a major download which can take a day or more, plenty of time for something to corrupt. Not even remotely trivial. Especially if you are brave enough to chance your arm at “updating” all the software which is Mavericks-only.
Lastly, I totally agree that 10.6.8 was almost perfect. Very little has been added to OSX since then, other than endless gimmicks, while much has been lost. Just like my recent change from iOS5 to iOS7, which is, frankly, depressing.
Started out doing photography at the age of 6 using an uncle's old 1940 kodak brownie box camera. At 15 years of age, I decided to buy my very own 1975 Praktica SLR camera. I now shoot with a Nikon D850. I do unpaid TFP and commercial paid work.