Apple Pulls Older Software From 'Purchased' Tab in Mac App Store
Apple recently removed older versions of OS X and other discontinued software from the Purchased tab of users who had previously purchased or downloaded them. With the change, it is no longer possible for users to download Aperture, iPhoto, OS X Lion, OS X Mountain Lion, and OS X Mavericks from the Mac App Store.
The decision to disallow users from downloading the older software is not going over well on reddit, where commenters are calling Apple's decision "user-hostile."
That's really unfortunate and hostile by Apple. What about people who use older operating systems due to compatibility problems with specific software?
I recently had to re-install Mavericks, but didn't keep the "Install OS X Mavericks" app. Now my only chance of getting it again is to download it from another location, and I don't know whether that image has been compromised.
It is not clear if Apple's decision to prevent users from downloading older software from the Mac App Store is a temporary bug or a permanent change. The software has, however, been unavailable for several days now.
It's possible Apple is aiming to prevent people from downloading software that is outdated and unsupported, but at least one of the now-inaccessible apps, Aperture, continues to work on OS X El Capitan.
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Now it seems that perhaps Apple doesn't share that same understanding. That's a real shame, but I guess it's their prerogative.
But I would have thought they would have had to explicitly let everyone know. People paid money for this stuff (at least, Aperture). People have machines that aren't supported by the latest versions of OS X. Apple is being foolish to rip away access without giving fair warning about downloading and making a personal backup (which, in my mind, is a wrong-headed expectation anyway, but whatever).
So what? Apple is generally thought to be poor with supporting older programs. I still use Snow Leopard to play a particular game due to Rosetta and I still use Mountain Lion because that’s the last version that an online-gaming client called GameRanger supports. That’s the only reason I use them and I have them installed on a secondary drive. It’s not causing any problems.