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Comment by cmckn | Hacker News Reader

I tried to set up a macOS VM recently so I could run an old version of iTunes to manage my iPods. I found it nearly impossible to even download an installer for older versions of the OS, and could never get it working. Where can one acquire an IPSW for, say, macOS Mojave? My understanding is this is not the same thing as the “Install macOS.app”?

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I like to use MIST (macOS Installer Super Tool) to grab old macOS versions: https://github.com/ninxsoft/Mist

Apple also provides instructions for downloading many older macOS versions via your terminal: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102662#terminal

Nice, thanks for sharing! It'd be interesting to integrate MIST into lume's ipsw command - right now Apple's native features in Apple Vz only provides download links for the latest supported version of the host, so grabbing older versions requires workarounds like this.

For a version of macOS that old, you’d probably want a dmg, which you can create with createinstallmedia if you have the Install macOS.app. Not sure if it’s supported with Lume as it’s the first time I’ve heard of it.

Mojave never was an IPSW, because it never ran on Apple Silicon. I imagine this tool might just not support that at all.

LoganDark is right. I've personally never tried, and don't think it'd be easy for any macOS predating Apple Virtualization Framework. For that you'd need something like UTM since they're relying on QEMU - these configs might help: https://github.com/adespoton/utmconfigs

Ahh I see. UTM was what I was trying, so I’ll give those a look! Thanks

I was trying to do something similar last year and gave up because it felt futile. That said, it was the push I needed to try Rockbox, and I haven't looked back. Managing things via the file system is really nice.

I started on my Linux box and despite many apps claiming to support iPods, none would actually work. I ended up getting an old Mac mini running again and I’m using that for now. I’ve never given Rockbox a good look, I should check it out.

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