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Comment by rtpg | Hacker News Reader

Kinda funny how this is true but there's a line of Mac OSes that can't connect to the App Store anymore so you can't upgrade the OS without manually downloading it off of an Apple help page.

It's not the end of the world, but I've had to help more than one person walk through this process cuz they're like "I can't update the OS????"

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I was a Mac admin when they pushed the change to move Updates into the Mac App Store and I hated it then. It didn't even make sense from an ill-advised "must match iOS" way, since OS updates happened in Settings.app on that platform. Just bone-headed "this will boost eNgAgEmEnT" BS.

It's been out of the App store and in settings for a long time now.

I am aware, thank you.

I never got the impression that it was any kind of attempt to match iOS or "boost engagement". It's simply that the Mac App Store was brand new, and it was time to phase out DVDs as the primary distribution mechanism.

They did sell USB flash drives with 10.7, but it didn't make sense for that to be the primary distribution method.

OTA updates were delivered through System Preferences for many years before the App Store, not on DVDs.

There's some wires getting crossed here. Sure, minor maintenance releases were delivered this way, but up until 10.7 the only way to upgrade to a new 10.x release (major) was the DVD purchased from Apple*. I have all my purchased boxed OS X releases from 10.0 through 10.6 still sitting on the shelf.

Major OS upgrades weren't free until the release of 10.9. 10.7 was first version you could buy as a download through the App Store.

* 10.1 was an odd release, in that re-sellers got given a limited amount of free upgrade DVDs to hand out, but did eventually retail for 20 bucks IIRC. Regardless, DVD was still the only option.

Sure, but I get my OS upgrades from the System Settings app now, what was stopping me from doing that in the early 2010s?

And yes, the Mac App Store was brand new, what better way to boost engagement than to move a fairly standard and typical function into it even though it was unrelated? Sounds like a good way to trick people into using your new thing. Like a boost, to engagement, one could say.

The blocker was that they were still charging money for new OS versions at that time. System Preferences didn't have a payment processing system, the App Store did.

And it's hard to even find the download links, and a lot of them don't work.

And aren't even hosted by Apple!

And it's funny how at the same time they're still hosting...

Apple IIGS OS System 6.0.1 https://download.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Apple_Sof...

The whole 19 floppy images of MacOS 7.5.3 https://download.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Apple_Sof...

(whoever inside of Apple is responsible for for keeping these links alive, thank you for your dedication!)

Is there a way to browse this thing?

Apple stopped showing browsable index files many years ago but someone scraped the wayback machine for URLs and I re-scanned it for more dead links and put up a list of links a while back https://mirrors.kalleboo.com/apples-download.info.apple.com-...

This is incredibly helpful! Thanks!

Huh? They're all linked from https://support.apple.com/en-us/102662

"Use a web browser for older versions" was not working for me the other day, though I now cannot remember if it was when I was dealing with a Safari version with old/unusable SSL. I was able to load the webpage, though, so SSL was working there, and therefore something was different about the download links than the page itself.

It'd be really nice if there were a place with authoritative original sha/md5 sums for the various ISOs, DMGs etc that are floating around.

Yeah, it creates this weird dead zone where the machine is perfectly capable of running the newer OS, but the built-in path to get there is broken

Not being connected to the App Store is a feature, not a bug.

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