Installing previous OS for testing?

Question

Created Oct ’16

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Sorry this is a question about legacy software rather then beta, but I couldn't see a better forum to ask this question in. I need to install El Capitan for testing backwards compatibility, I can't find any way of doing this in the support downloads. Additionally if I try to download it from the app store by clicking a public link for El Capitan I get a prompt in the app store "The item you've requested is not currently available in the U.S. store."

How can I get an offical download for El Capitan?

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Answer 1

sulliops OP

Oct ’16

If you ever downloaded El Capitan, it should still be in your purchase library in the Mac App Store. From there, you can download it. If you can't, contact Apple Developer support via email, or by phone during business hours and ask them. They should be able to give you a key or download.

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Answer 2

HStriepe OP

Oct ’16

It is clearly usseful as a developer to keep all legacy versions around. We currently support back to Lion.

Most of the work is done in VMs, but you need to be able to boot a real version now in then for sneaky issues

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Answer 3

tywebbooooo OP

Oct ’16

Yeah. Lion through to El Capitan should still be available in the purchases tab if you previously downloaded them.

But actually leopard and snow leopard are also still available as free downloads for developers at https://developer.apple.com/download/more/ . You need to be logged in as developer first though. Then scroll down to

Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard 9A581

and

Mac OS X version 10.6 Snow Leopard build 10A432

to download the dmgs. These download as leopard_9a581_userdvd.dmg and mac_os_x_v10.6_build_10a432_user_dvd.dmg respectively.

They can of course be burnt to dual layer dvd, but actually run much faster if you restore them to an 8GB usb instead. Then boot with option key to select.

Once installed they may be updated to 10.5.8 and 10.6.8 via combo updates at https://support.apple.com/kb/DL866?locale=en_US and https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1399?locale=en_US respectively. You can also then run software update to get any other subsequent updates too.

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