Archive
All the Latest Mac OS Downloads In One Place
Those of us who use Macs may have need to reinstall an older version of the OS from time to time. At the MacRecycleClinic, we keep thumb drives and external hard drives partitioned with individual installers from Catalina on back – or even Time Machine backups (which are quicker than OS installs).
While it might seem easy to just Google your request, it’s not always that easy. Thus, we offer a list of OS downloads (from the Apple website and beyond) so that you don’t have to go looking for them. Even tho Catalina is available via the App Store, we’ll include it here (as a link).
Note that some of the earlier Mac OS varieties like OS 7 Lion is, for some reason, sold by Apple rather than provided for free (but keep reading – there’s a solution for that!). If you have a need for a really old OS and don’t want to download and install, contact MacRecycleClinic, as we have DVDs with most of the older OS software – including some PowerPC software, and can help you with the install.
If you want to make a bootable installer (to put on an external drive or thumb drive), this is what Apple suggests. Better is this great free (donationware) App – DiskMakerX.
(All photos except where noted and links are courtesy Apple via the company website.)
Update – Dec. 2021 – The Internet Archive also offers Mac OS software downloads from its site for free, along with other software. It is an amazing site and offers a tremendous amount of information from software to music, old TV shows and much, much more (check out the WayBackMachine for old websites!) Please give them a donation if you decide to use their site or download software.
** NOTE: IF THE LINKS BELOW DON’T WORK YOU CAN USE THE DOSDUDE SOFTWARE PATCHER FOR EACH OF THE OS INSTALLS. DOWNLOAD AND RUN THE SPECIFIC PATCHER (YOU’LL HAVE TO ALLOW ITS DOWNLOAD FROM THE SECURITY&PRIVACY PREFERENCE PANE) AND THEN DOWNLOAD THE OS FROM THE TOOLS MENU ON THE TOOLBAR.. THAT WILL BE YOUR INSTALLER. YOU’LL FIND THE LINK HERE.
If this does not work, goto this MacOSXDaily page that explains how to get a full Mojave download using the DOSDude Patcher.
Following is a rundown of all the OS X versions for the Mac through 2020 – (thanks, Macworld UK)! Even better – this UK site has actual download links for older Apple software going way, way back starting with OS 10.9 Mavericks (from the Apple Discussion Community.)
Snow Leopard and earlier Apple OS versions can only be installed from DVD (or 3.5 disk).
That said – we just found (March, 2021) a website that lets you download at least some of these earlier Mac operating systems:
https://webforpc.com/sitemap/
OS X 10.0: Cheetah – 24 March 2001
OS X 10.1: Puma – 25 September 2001
OS X 10.2: Jaguar – 24 August 2002
OS X 10.3 Panther (Pinot) – 24 October 2003
OS X 10.4 Tiger (Merlot) – 29 April 2005
[OS X 10.4.4 Tiger (Chardonnay)]
OS X 10.5 Leopard (Chablis) – 26 October 2007
OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard – 28 August 2009
OS X 10.7 Lion (Barolo) – 20 July 2011
OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion (Zinfandel) – 25 July 2012
OS X 10.9 Mavericks (Cabernet) – 22 October 2013
OS X 10.10: Yosemite (Syrah) – 16 October 2014
OS X 10.11: El Capitan (Gala) – 30 September 2015
macOS 10.12: Sierra (Fuji) – 20 September 2016
macOS 10.13: High Sierra (Lobo) – 25 September 2017
macOS 10.14: Mojave (Liberty) – 24 September 2018
macOS 10.15: Catalina (Jazz) – 7 October 2019
macOS 10.16: Big Sur – 20 November 2020
By the way – this is an interesting compilation of all the older Apple/Mac software. It’s a list only as the “links” don’t work.
It’s Time To Add Antivirus Software To Protect Your Mac
(Silver Spring, Md.) It’s been a long time coming, but it is now time for you to seriously consider adding antivirus software for your Mac.
The reason is actually very simple. Our Macs have been around for a long time, grown in popularity and numbers and hackers have taken notice. Over the past few years, there have been increasing reports of vulnerabilities in the Mac OS (that Apple may or may not fix), security issues, ransomware and much more.
So we’re at a point here at MacRecycleClinic where we’ve decided to add a free version of Avast (rated as the best free antivirus software for the Mac by MacWorld) to every machine we refurbish for donation. I would strongly recommend you read their article (or search online – there are many more) and make a decision for yourself. As you’ll see, the best paid programs offer everything from malware protection to ransomware monitoring and much more.
Macworld author Glenn Fleishman notes that “antivirus software should be able to neutralize a threat before it can begin wreaking havoc. That means preventing the download, installation, or execution of malicious software.”
For our purposes, Avast will do a fine job as freeware on our refurbished Macs. If the user (the person or family to whom we donate a machine) wants more protection, they can either move to the paid version of Avast or try one of the other companies that sell antivirus software (Avast Pro is $59.99 per year.)
I will note that the U.S. Government has banned one company selling antivirus software – Kaspersky Labs – because of “fears of Russian intelligence.”
Must-Read Articles
From time-to-time, we’ll post links to articles in this file you will likely find of particular interest. Send us a link (in comments) if there’s something you feel our readers need to know about!
Keranger: the first “in-the-wild” ransomware for Macs. But certainly not the last.
Macworld.com
“Keranger was the first – but now experts see ransomware-as-a-service that enables interested ‘customers’ to purchase Mac-hostile ransomware.”
KRACK Wi-Fi vulnerabilities and the Mac OS/iOS Universe
MacRumors.com
“Apple has already patched serious vulnerabilities in the WPA2 Wi-Fi standard that protects many modern Wi-Fi networks, the company told iMore’s Rene Ritchie this morning.“
Russian Hackers Stole NSA Data on U.S. Cyber Defense (Kaspersky Labs)
Wall Street Journal
The hackers appear to have targeted the contractor after identifying the files through the contractor’s use of a popular antivirus software made by Russia-based Kaspersky Lab…
Critical Code in Millions of Macs Isn’t Getting Apple’s Updates
Wired
Researchers dug into the deep-seated, arcane code in Apple machines known as EFI, and found it’s often dangerously neglected. Read the full story
Part Two: Using the Patcher Tool
Off the top, I want to thank dosdude1.com for providing the software – and the instructions – to upgrade many older Macs to OSX Sierra. Please donate if you can!
The benefit to this update is that we are getting a number of Macs – Towers, Mini’s and iMacs – that can only go up to OS7 or OS8 and thus are increasingly out-of-date. If we can get at least some of these Macs up to OSX Sierra, we have a great chance to give them new life for a few more years. And that means we can give students, families, non-profit groups and others the ability to work with the latest OS and be as productive as they can be going forward.
The website lays out the requirements, supported (and non-supported) machines, things you’ll need and known issues (which we laid out in Part 1.)
You can use the instructions from dosdude1 to take you through the process. My intent here is to give you my take as I went through those instructions.
TAKE ONE
The instructions are clear that you need a flash drive of at least 8 GB in size. I found that you can get away with a smaller one. That said, you will need to get ahold of a copy of the Sierra installer by using a newer Mac to get it from the App store or dosdude1 gives you a link to the MEGA Unlimited site in New Zealand – but you can get instructions on how to download it from other websites as well.
You’ll also need a hard drive with an older version of the Mac OS (based on the requirements for the upgrade) or a blank drive. In either case, you’ll be installing Sierra – so it will be a “normal” install as you would with any Mac update, or a clean install on a new or blank drive.
Update: This is my main drive info. I did this upgrade on an exact copy:
NOTE – we plan to do a clean install and, with some additional software tools (like Open Office) we will plan to make a Time Machine backup to use to make clones for other Macs. (Yes there are other ways to make clones – as in using SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cleaner. But I’ve found that using a Time Machine backup is actually quicker. (See note below about this.)
We’ll write about that experience in a future blog.
TAKE TWO
Download the Patcher Tool as instructed. Plug in the USB drive and format it using Disk Utilities. (That said, the Patcher Tool will format it anyway when you go to the next step.)
NOTE – I used a 6 GB partition on a large USB drive that I have with various OSX installers without a problem.
It’s time to install OSX Sierra on the USB Drive. Make sure you know where the Sierra installer app is – the patch tool will want to know.
Run the Patcher Tool and click on the Sierra icon to verify your Sierra install app. This went as planned for me. Now it’s time to install the OSX Base System on the formatted USB drive (or in my case – partition).
Remember, this will be the boot drive from which you’ll install OSX Sierra onto the drive of your choice.
With the USB drive selected, I clicked on “Start Operation” to begin installing the Sierra install app.
This is where I ran into some trouble – as the install would get almost all the way to the end and then give me an error message. I reformatted the USB drive and tried again. Same thing. Third time, I LEFT what had been installed on the USB partition and walked away. The install was successful this time! Not sure why but it was time to move on.
TAKE THREE
I keep a Time Machine backup and a SuperDuper backup of my boot drive, so I decided to use the backup as the guinea pig for this update. I rebooted the Mac from the USB drive (Apple Menu -> Restart – Press the Option key). If your USB drive only has one partition (with the Sierra install on it) you’ll see your boot drive and one that is called “OS X Base System.” THAT is what you want to boot from.
I intended to UPDATE from El Capitan (10.11), but if you want to do a clean install, you’ll need to boot into the install drive and then pull down System Utilities to format that drive (yes – you could have done this before as well).
Proceed with the installation on the disk of your choice. This will take awhile so be sure to go into System Preferences and tell your Mac (using Energy Saver) to not go to sleep or turn off your hard drives.
Once installed, your Mac will boot into the new OS. You’ll know because the background will be the Sierra Nevada mountains and “About This Mac” from the Apple Menu will confirm it all.
TAKE FOUR
I was almost done! Although it LOOKS like you’ve upgraded properly, you still need to patch the new OS. So I rebooted BACK into the USB Sierra installer partition. This time, when it booted, I found a small box had popped up with four menu items. You only care about the last one – macOS Post Install. I chose that and it asks you to choose your Mac model.
Luckily – it TELLS YOU what Mac Model you have. Choose that model from the drop down box and you will see some suggested patches pre-populated for the model Mac you have. Select the drive you installed Sierra on and press PATCH. For some reason, I had to do this twice but it did finally take.
On the bottom of the Post Install, you’ll see “Complete!” on the left and a Reboot button. Ignore “Force Cache Rebuild.”
My Mac rebooted into the backup drive with Sierra installed. It worked perfectly! I checked for any updates and only had one – Pages – to update. The patched system should allow updates as well (at least for Sierra) but there have been none so far.
FINALLY
That was it! I will likely go ahead and install Sierra on my original El Capitan boot drive (2 TB) as well after giving Sierra a run through on the backup.
Given that the patches are Mac-specific, I’ll likely have to run the patcher tool on each machine we update at the MacRecycleClinic. The good news is, I can boot from the USB drive and install Sierra on any Mac that is supported. From there, I just have to run the Patcher Tool and choose the right version of the machine to patch.
The other plan (as mentioned above) – to create a Mac-specific Time Machine clone may not work but we’ll give it a try and report back.
NOTE that there are still some restrictions with certain Macs – in some cases, for instance, WiFi won’t work – the website says machines ( a wide range actually) running the Broadcom BCM4321 WiFi module. The fix is to install a compatible WiFi card if one is available.
Let us know your own experiences with this patch and any suggestions you might have to make it easier.
MRC Donates PowerMac Labs to Two Area Schools
SILVER SPRING, Md. – The Mac Recycle Clinic (MRC) got the school year off to a good start with donations for two area schools:
– 12 complete PowerMac systems went to the Cheverly (Md.) STEM Education Center located in the Cheverly United Methodist Church. The school provides Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) classes for area home schoolers.
– 6 additional towers went to the Chance Academy, which is located in the Michigan Park Christian Church in Washington, D.C.. This school provides the homeschool network in Maryland and the District of Columbia with academic programs in the sciences.
All of the machines (including monitors, keyboards and mice) from the MRC are donated Macs that are reconditioned to make sure everything is working properly. We have a “master” hard drive that we clone (copy) so that all machines have the same set of software when they go out the door.
Since all these machines were PowerPC Macs (pre-Intel chip machines), the software is all optimized to work with OS 10.5.8 – the last OS version that works with PPC Macs.
Critical Exposure’s Spring Exhibit a Hit with MRC Macs!
The Washington, D.C. non-profit group Critical Exposure is celebrating it’s 8th annual spring exhibit – Zoom In: National Lens, Local Focus. We are thrilled that they are using Macs donated by MacRecycleClinic for the exhibit, which features photography and writing by D.C. youth who are creating real change in their schools and communities.
The exhibit is at the Pepco Edison Gallery at 702 8th St. NW (a block from the Gallery Place metro).
Thanks to Merrill College of Journalism (University of Maryland) Lecturer and PhotoJournalist Bethany Swain for this great pic of a young visitor enjoying the Critical Exposure reception this past week. All the Mac PPC towers and monitors were donated by MRC.
Tower Computers for Critical Exposure
MacRecycleClinic has been working for a few weeks to get a number of PPC towers ready for a Washington, D.C. based non profit called Critical Exposure.
We found out about this non-profit that “teaches youth to use the power of photography and their own voices to become effective advocates for school reform and social change” through Bethany Swain, a former CNNer and current lecturer at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. Bethany’s students have gone to Critical Exposure’s offices to mentor their students. One of the Merrill Journalists as they are called, Louie Dane, wrote a retrospective for the Merrill News website.
Maryland journalism student Louie Dane mentors a Critical Exposure participant.
When we get a request like this – the first questions we always ask at the MacRecycleClinic is what do you want to DO with the computers and what software would you LIKE to have. The answers to those questions provide the focus we need to put together the “package” they receive.
In Critical Exposure’s case, their students want to do multimedia – video, photo and audio editing. So on top of the “regular” OS X install we do, there were some additional things to add. Since none of these machines can go higher than OS 10.5.8, we had to make sure that the software we included could work with the last PPC Tower from Apple before the company moved to Intel. We would have loved to provide Intel machines with Final Cut Express (donations welcome), but folks are holding on to their Intel towers these days because Apple has not come out with a new update in quite a while. And FCE is hard to come by in numbers (Apple no longer offers it in fact).
That said, these machines run a good, stable and powerful version of the Mac OS and are very capable computers for what Critical Exposures students would like to do. There may be issues with third party software – Flash, Adobe Reader, etc. but not enough to make that much of a difference. These machines are ignored by hackers as well – one less worry.
MacRecycleClinic Heads into 2013
MRC Volunteer Jim Ritz works with a client’s iMac
We’ve hit January yet again and MRC continues to move forward with its goal of recycling and refurbishing Macs. Over the past few months, we have started moving away from most of the older PPC models save the newest and fastest model G4s and G5s. Interestingly, one of the predictors here are Macs that use the original Airport card. Turns out they are becoming incompatible with newer wireless systems – they are not able to provide the higher level of security these new wireless systems demand and won’t let the Macs log into the network. That said – if you need an original Airport or Airport Express let us know – we have many for sale inexpensively!
We’re starting to see some Intels coming in finally but many have had hard use or were damaged when picked up. So we have continued to gather equipment and then try to make one good machine from 2 or more that are damaged.
We’ve continued to donate machines to local school students and families in the Silver Spring area and remain open to recommendations from school counselors or non profits. Recently, we gave a machine to a 6 year old who is being home-schooled. He and his mom took a cab and buses all the way over from Landover to pick up their iMac. We are planning once again to provide laptops to Montgomery County Schools in the Downcounty Consortium for their AfterProm/PostProm parties. We were able to provide machines to every school in the Downcounty last year!
Machines that can not be salvaged are now totally disassembled (to the extent that they can) and are recycled both to a third part recycling company or back to the Montgomery County Government’s Shady Grove Transfer Station in Derwood.
MRC Volunteers Jade Curtis and Phil Marchetti work on a sad iMac while MRC clients look on.
We continue our Monday Night Clinic at Marvin Church (Four Corners/Silver Spring) from 7 to 9 pm and tho we are not overwhelmed (a good thing!), we have had a steady stream of folks coming in for help. Some folks have sick Macs, others are looking for help transferring their data from an old machine to a new one. We’re here to help! And trust that we will tell you if we can’t repair something as well.
One frustration remains the Mac Lab we set up at Marvin for use by students or the community – it just sits there unused at the moment. We are hoping the folks at Marvin can find a way to get some adult supervision in the afternoon so the lab can be used.
Please let us know how we can help! We have folks with many, many years of experience who are willing to do things Apple and local businesses are unwilling to do (because it is not cost effective for the most part). As a non-profit, we simply ask for a donation for our time – all the money goes to MRC since we are all volunteers.
An Update and Look Forward to the Summer
Once again I wanted to take the opportunity to thank everyone for reading the blog and giving us a chance to talk about what MacRecycleClinic is all about. The stats say we have had more than 7,000 hits – just amazing for an occasional blog. So thank you!
The Clinic is only open Mondays (save holidays) from 7 to 9 PM which makes it a challenge for folks to find us or take advantage of our services. We only work on out-of-warranty machines but love to answer questions and can help install software or hardware on any Mac. We have also been asked to help grab information from older machines (going WAY BACK in fact to original Macs and even Apple IIs and ///s) or just help keep older machines working.
Recycling Memories: 2002
These early Bondi iMacs were refurbished by the old Washington Apple Pi "Tuesday Night Crew" that is now MacRecycleClinic. They all went to good homes. Note the G4 towers providing support!
As I have time – I will reprint some articles about recycling that I (or others in what is now the MacRecycleClinic group) wrote about our efforts over the years to refurbish and return Macs back into the community. I’m doing this not only to preserve the articles but to show just how far back MRC and our old Washington Apple Pi Tuesday Night Crew goes – how our efforts to recycle have gone back to Apple II days in fact. I’ll add photos as well when possible.
Note that in 2012 MCPS – Montgomery County (Maryland) Public Schools – basically only supports PCs these days. That said, MRC has had luck working with school counselors and PTSAs to get computers to students and families that don’t have computers. If you have a group that is trying to recycle computers, be sure to check and see what your local school district will – or won’t – accept. But there are many non-profits, students and families who would appreciate a refurbished computer. I just read the newspaper, work with local churches and school groups and never have a problem finding someone who could use a recycled Macintosh.
MacRecycleClinic Photos
iFixit Blog
- Deere Ducks Free Software Responsibilities March 24, 2023
- M2 MacBook Pro Screen Swaps are Kinda Haunted? March 23, 2023
- Tesla’s Repair Restrictions Spark Antitrust Lawsuits March 20, 2023
- Colorado Approves First-Ever Agricultural Right to Repair Bill March 16, 2023
- PSVR 2 Teardown March 13, 2023