“This morning on Twitter, Antonio asked, ‘Anyone know how to get a copy of macOS Sierra?”” Rob Griffiths writes for The Robservatory. “I thought ‘Well, that’s an easy question to answer — via the Mac App Store, of course.’ As it turns out, that’s the right answer, but it was much harder to find than I expected it to be.”
“I started on the Purchased tab in the Mac App Store app, where you can (theoretically) see all past purchases, including prior Mac OS X versions,” Griffiths writes. “However, those old releases stop with Mac OS X El Capitan from 2015; neither Sierra nor High Sierra are listed.”
“Next I tried searching the Mac App Store for Sierra, but that nets only Server and High Sierra, and a few apps that appear to have gotten away with using ‘Sierra’ in their descriptions,” Griffiths writes. “Given how much trouble I had finding this page, I thought I’d post it here for anyone looking for Sierra.”
How to download macOS Sierra here.
MacDailyNews Note: Apple recommends High Sierra, the latest version of macOS, to get the latest security and compatibility enhancements.
This is probably the single most stupid thing that Apple has done.
Some poor soul that buys a used Mac and had never purchased a particular version of the OS, cannot simply go to a list on Apple’s site and download the version “they” want.
I have had to burn DVDs or make USB flash drives for people stuck in this black hole of Apple thinking “That version never existed, download only the newest OS. You’ll love it.”
Yeah I hate that too. I have archived versions of previous Mac OS’s but Apple should make many of the OS X versions available, especially since many many machines are still “stuck” at one version or another.
I have yet to move past Sierra (and El Capitan on some machines) and a friend of mine who did install High Sierra encountered a total app compatibility disaster when he did so and now needs to undo it. And AFS is not yet foolproof and ready for prime pro time IMHO. The smart pro is NEVER current with their OS X version.
Lagging a little behind pays big dividends. If you only have to worry about browser compatibility then go for it.
What Apple “recommends” isn’t always the best course of action for some users. Naturally they’re going to tout their most recent effort (and pester users to upgrade) but need to issue some caveats as MDN also neglected to do above. Certainly business and the Enterprise knows this all too well and wisely take their time with PROVEN upgrades, not just the most recent.
Good info about how to download Sierra now. Apple needs to make it easier to download any version of macOS/OS X.
And I wpuld use High Sierra if it didn’t break my entire workflow. Some of ys do more than FaceTime or Instagram.
Still using Sierra… waiting for Alsoft DiskWarrior to become usable on APFS disks.
TechTool Pro v9.6 from Micromat offers the first ability to repair APFS. But they also say there’s ‘more to come’. I have not yet played with the new version on High Sierra.
Meanwhile, you can keep track of where Alsoft is with DiskWarrior v5.x and APFS here:
https://alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/highsierraapfs.html
Apple File System (APFS) disks are not recognized by DiskWarrior 5.0 and will not appear in the list of disks.
I have the five latest OSs Yos, Mav, Cap, Sierra, Hi Sierra. I used “Install Disk Creator” which allowed me to create a bootable partition for each. I use an ext 120GB SSD USB 3.0. Created 5 equal sized partitions and using the App I now have 5 to choose from if I boot from it. The remaining drive space is for misc software.