If you still have an old Mac at home, you may still be using an old macOS. If it’s OS X Lion or OS Blog Mr. Macintosh noticed recently is. Fortunately, there is a solution – and it’s even free.
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Sometimes you need old systems
In principle, it is not advisable to use such old macOS versions. They contain numerous – and often serious – security holes that have been patched for years. However, if there are no newer operating system variants on the Mac despite tricks like the OpenCore Legacy Patcher, users have no choice. (Then you should at least avoid going online with these computers.)
With OS X Lion (10.7) and OS X Mountain Lion (10.8), Apple had offered the systems for a fee for many years. You could get the operating systems in the form of a data carrier in the Apple Online Store for just over 20 euros. Around two and a half years ago, Apple finally made the software available for free in its Mac App Store, where it has since been possible to easily download the installer. This is still possible on supported systems. In the Apple Online Store, however, the links to the USB sticks now lead to data nirvana.
OS X 10.7 and 10.8 requirements
OS X 10.7 can be installed on all Macs that are equipped with at least an Intel Core 2 Duo processor; Core i3, i5 and i7 as well as The systems must be running at least OS X 10.6.6 beforehand, otherwise the setup will not work. The downloads were each a good 4.5 GB in size. iCloud support was also introduced with Lion and is available from OS X 10.7.5. With OS X 10.9, Apple began distributing its operating system to users free of charge.
It’s confusing that Apple also sold the USB stick versions of Lion and Mountain Lion in addition to the free downloads for so long. But apparently there was a certain need here. All operating systems before were distributed on optical media.
(bsc)