Dried up watering hole- OSx installers

[linkmaster6]

Hi everyone,
I might be chasing my tail on this one but I'm trying to find out where in the heck anyone is suppose to get the installers for Mac OS's like Sierra and High Sierra.

I've had a few people bring their macs into my shop, usually failed hard drives, and want to get back up an running. I can get the original OS through the online recovery, but like the two macbooks that are here at the moment, are stuck with only having Mountain Lion loaded on them even though they support High Sierra. Now admittedly these do not have anyone signed into an apple account at the moment.

But I do however have a late 2009 iMac (21.5") running 10.9.5, that is signed into the users, but doesn't get an option to upgrade to any of the new OS's. Mojave is in compatible with this model, but Mojave is the only macOS listed in the app store anymore.

So does anyone have a work around or know of a place to get an image of High Sierra?

 

[ferrarr]

The only legal way to get the Mac OS X/OS X/macOS installers is through the Mac OS X/OS X/macOS App Store. The owner of the Mac will use their Apple ID and Purchase (Get) the upgrade for free. If the owner did not originally get the older files, they may be able to get some through these,

How to upgrade to OS X El Capitan - Apple Support
How to upgrade to macOS Sierra - Apple Support
How to upgrade to macOS High Sierra - Apple Support

I would start with El Capitan first. Then try the others if that does not work.

If you haven't done so already, you may want to create your own Apple ID, so you will not have this problem going any further. Then you can create USB installers for current and newer versions of macOS. Use this Apple Support document to make the USB drives, How to create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support.

 

[linkmaster6]

Thank you ferrarr, those links are very helpful.
I tried them on the imac I have here in the shop, got a couple of odd results.
When I try El Captian, I get the message "This version of OS X 10.11 cannot be installed on this computer".
For Sierra, I get challenged for the user appleid password (waiting for them to get back to me)
For High Sierra it really stumps me. Instead of giving me the GET button, its greyed out and says installed.

 

[ferrarr]

In the top Menu bar, click on the Apple logo, and select About This Mac, the window that opens will tell you about the iMac and which OS X/macOS version is installed.

For the El Capitan message, this usually means the "Mac" is newer than the OS version, so it's probably a 2016 or newer version iMac.

 

[linkmaster6]

Thats whats throwing me, currently shows version 10.9.5 installed. My mac-onese isn't super fluent but I'm pretty sure that means it has Mavericks installed.

 

[pigoo3]

My mac-onese is super fluent but I'm pretty sure that means it has Mavericks installed.

Did you mean to say "isn't super fluent"? If it was "super fluent"...you would already have all the answers.

Here's the bottom line with Apple macOS installers (at least for the period of time concerning the 2009 iMac you have). MacOS 10.8 (Mountain Lion)...was the last macOS version that Mac-Users had to purchase. Starting with macOS 10.9 (Mavericks)...all macOS upgrades were free.

But at the same time...Apple also started a "system" where when a new macOS version was released...the old previous macOS version was removed form the Apple servers. Thus (for example) when macOS 10.10 (Yosemite) came out..macOS 10.9 (Mavericks) was removed from the Apple servers...and this "system" continued this way for some time.

Now if someone did download Mavericks from the Apple store when it was available...then it will continue to be available in that person's "Purchased" area (after it was removed for non-downloaders). For those folks that did not download Mavericks when it was available...they're out of luck. Same thing applies for at least the next 3-4 macOS releases (including El Capitan).

I'm sure you will feel this policy is unfair or unreasonable (and I tend to agree)...but it is what it is.

If you need older macOS installers (that are no longer available at the Apple Store)...probably have at least 3 choices:

1. Find someone you know that may have the macOS installer you need. Since you run a "Shop"...you must know someone. FYI...we really don't do this sort of thing here...since it's really not clear if Apple's EULA allows it.

2. I'm pretty sure everything you need is for sale on eBay. Again...not really 100% sure if this is legit.

3. Contact Apple...maybe Apple can hook you up. Since these macOS installers were free originally...Apple really shouldn't have an issue with this. Just got to do the "leg-work" to find out by contacting Apple.

HTH,

- Nick

 

[MacInWin]

One small nitpick with Nick's post. Apple didn't remove the previous version from the servers, just from the store, unless you had downloaded it previously. And when you couple that with the fact that the installer deletes itself at the end of the installation, it got harder to keep one. What most of us learned was to download the installer, cancel out of it after it launched, save the install file that was in Applications to someplace else, then run the update and let it delete the copy in Applications. The other copy would still be there. Most of us made bootable installer drives on USB sticks so that if we needed to go back, it was relatively easy.

However, for your current situation, this link is from Apple and has links to HS, Sierra and El Capitan. Since it's still active at Apple, the links should work. How to upgrade to macOS High Sierra - Apple Support

 

[linkmaster6]

Congrats Pigoo3, you caught a typo.

In my area there aren't a high number of mac users, so I don't typically deal with them on a daily or sometimes even a weekly basis. I'm basing this post on my experience that Windows and Linux have disc images available to burn so installing their operating systems isn't hampered by having to locate the browser version of the link to the app store to find the macOS.

 

[linkmaster6]

MacInWin, that's what I'm hoping to make with getting access to these installers as an end game goal.

 

[pigoo3]

Congrats Pigoo3, you caught a typo.

Part of the job!

- Nick

 

[ferrarr]

For High Sierra it really stumps me. Instead of giving me the GET button, its greyed out and says installed.

This makes me think High Sierra, is already installed on another partition? Maybe they had an issue with High Sierra, and tried to go back to an earlier OS X/macOS version?

 

[linkmaster6]

Sorry for the hiatus, was busy on the road doing onsite calls for the past couple of days.
My client with the imac hasn't returned my calls lately so I'm a bit stallmated waiting for the code for the 2 step authentication. Gotta love end users.

So with the links Ferrar posted I decided to try them on a macbook pro we keep handy in the shop, and tried to download them that way. The macbook pro currently has El Capitan installed, so I figured it would be a good starting point.
When I hit the link to download it I get the error UNTRUSTED_CERT_TITLE Untrusted_Cert_Body. Took a look and on the surface it points to it being a date/time issue (most posts seemed to be about trying to do the install from the online recovery and the time being wrong), but our macbook pro has the correct date, time, and time zone. So I'm not certain what else would cause that error.