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Apple themselves have been useless, directing me by email and in person advice (I visited the Apple Store) to the App Store to download OS X 10.11. This doesn't work on my old MacBook, and when I click the button for "Learn More" it doesn't provide any more pages.

I want to upgrade as high as I can to squeeze a couple more years use out of the old machine. I know how to upgrade the OS but I need to know where to find the software. Apple don't seem to want to sell it to me.

Any ideas?

Please don't tell me to buy a Windows machine or such amusing jokes. I probably will buy a cheap ChromeBook for my next laptop. I just want to get a few more years out of this Macintosh I have now.

My sister-in-Law works for Apple, and to her knowledge Apple doesn't keep the old download files around once they update to a new OS (they want customers running the newest shiniest tech). You could try to find it on a 3rd party site, or just do what I did and put install Ubuntu to replace Mac OS.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Please don't tell me to buy a Windows machine or such amusing jokes.

 Inquisitor Lord Bane wrote:
just do what I did and put install Ubuntu to replace Mac OS.

Done in one!


I'm not into OSX, but when you say you need 10.9, can you use Mavericks - 10.9.5?


If so I think you can buy a flash drive with it on it from here or on ebay.

I probably can use 10.9.5, the problem is how to get hold of a copy, so your link is a great help!

Thanks also to Inquisitor Lord Bane for his idea about Ubuntu. That can be my plan B.

So I've ordered a USB stick with 10.9.5 on it. I'll let you know how I get on.

Received stick with 10.9.5.

My MacBook is incompatible, apparently, despite being a late 2008 model. That's three counts against Apple Tech Support, they are obviously useless now. On the plus side, this means I can go down the Linux route.

I have used the stick to upgrade my desktop Mac and that went OK although now there is a bit of a nightmare to get iPhoto and iMusic working again. I'm going to have the same problems with my MacBook, in order to export all my photos and music for Linux.

Macs used to be so great for this kind of stuff and they've become such a fething nightmare now! Sign in to App Store to do anything or use half your software. Back up mysteriously with Time Machine.

I don't think I'm going to buy any more Macs. The sad end of a fruitful business and personal partnership going back over 30 years. I started with System 6.

One of my earliest computers was an Apple IIe. I'm pretty reliably a Windows person now though, although i use linux on my servers.

I won't tell you to buy a non-Mac. I will tell you to install Windows on it instead. No need to buy a new one.

Seriously though my brother deals with Macs quite a bit so I'll drop him a line and have him look at the issue.

Which MacBook is it?

For instance, we run 10.9.5 on a 2010 Core Duo.

I am a Mac fanboy but have been grinding my teeth re upgrading the three Macs in our household. There are more incompatibilities between machines and OS than is good for my mental health.

It's a MacBook 13-inch model 4,1 which actually I find is the early 2008 hardware (makes sense as I bought it in about August 2008.) The OS is v10.7.5.

Just checked Apple's compatibility guide and it's useless.

Looks to me like 10.7.5 is the latest compatible version.

http://www.everymac.com/systems/by_capability/maximum-macos-supported.html

http://eshop.macsales.com/guides/Mac_OS_X_Compatibility

I was running a 2003 machine with OS 10.4 on it, still running it at work, actually. I get multiple warnings from Firefox, and mail crashed because it had about 20K emails on it, but aside from that, it's still web-capable and photoshop enabled.