Is there no way to get Mavericks or Yosemite any more???

[isisism]

I'm still on Snow Leopard due to using this system for FCP7 and having on going projects and not wanting to upgrade in the middle of them. Now I'm upgrading both my system and OS and find that I can purchase a download of Mountain Lion or upgrade to El Capitan for free, but cannot get the OS in between at all.

I wanted to get an actual disc of Mountain Lion for safety and cannot even find anyone selling an authentic one on ebay. I do see several people selling usb flash drives with any/all OS versions. That seems pretty sketchy. Would there be any way to tell if they had added any back doors into the software?

Had I known the OSs would just 'disappear' and become unobtainable I would have done something sooner to at least download an installer. Otoh, the chat person said that I cannot download El Capitan without installing it, that the Mac Store will automatically proceed to install El Capitan after I download it. I do not like to have so little control over what happens to my system. Is there a way to get the download without installing it immediately and to save the download for future use?

I have Snow Leopard on discs that I bought from the Apple Store, will that help me if I upgrade my OS and need to boot off a disc for recovery?

 

[hallux]

If you had not "purchased" (they were free) those older versions, there is no way to get an official version from Apple for install yourself. You MIGHT be able to see the Genius Bar to get help with installation.

As for what the chat person said - they were wrong. Once the download of El Capitan has completed, the install window opens but you can CMD-Q to kill it and not complete the install, it has made ZERO changes at that point.

 

[isisism]

If you had not "purchased" (they were free) those older versions, there is no way to get an official version from Apple for install yourself. You MIGHT be able to see the Genius Bar to get help with installation.

As for what the chat person said - they were wrong. Once the download of El Capitan has completed, the install window opens but you can CMD-Q to kill it and not complete the install, it has made ZERO changes at that point.

Thanks for the info.

I know people with installers for all versions, can I use theirs or are the installers somehow ID'd to whoever downloaded them?

 

[thats all folks]

Thanks for the info.

I know people with installers for all versions, can I use theirs or are the installers somehow ID'd to whoever downloaded them?

the installer is an installer, will work on any (Apple) computer.

 

[Fishrrman]

There are ways to obtain installers for copies of the OS that Apple doesn't sell or provide for free any longer.

Because they are (cough)… "unofficial" … can't say more about it here.