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User profile for user: mike loeven
mike loeven Author
User level: Level 1
0 points

legacy versions of apple software and the mysterious appldnld.m7z.net site

This has been bugging me for a while now. the other day i finally updated to itunes 9 and lo and behold it refused to start so i went looking for itunes 4.8 which i had before the update. it seems that all traces of legacy versions of apple software vanish off the face of the internet shortly after they are posted. so i asked on a forum and was given a long link to an apple server with the address appldnld.m7z.net/content.info.apple.com/insert file info here" and lo and behold i was able to find the dmg file for itunes 4.8. i did some digging and from what i have been able to find out this mysterious server seems to retain all versions of apple software past and present and yet remains unsearchable and un connectable unless someone gives you a direct link to the file. so my question is where do people get these links and why does apple make it so god ****** hard to find legacy versions of their software when they have an entire server full of them available to anyone who manages to acquire the full url

Posted on Jun 23, 2010 8:54 PM

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6 replies
User profile for user: a brody
a brody
User level: Level 10
83,221 points

Jun 24, 2010 3:42 AM in response to mike loeven

A lot of links come from just having years of experience with user groups, while others people accidentally stumble upon while reading Mac news sites. Arguably the best way to find a news site is http://www.macsurfer.com and some just come from innovative searches of Google or other search engines. I made a compilation of search engines here*:

http://www.macmaps.com/isearch.html

- * links to my pages may give me compensation

Message was edited by: a brody
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User profile for user: varjak paw
varjak paw
User level: Level 10
170,206 points

Jun 24, 2010 7:17 AM in response to mike loeven

And such servers are not intended to be public. Apple generally removes old versions of software when a new release comes out; only in a few instances, usually when a new version no longer supports some older OS, are older versions kept available (iTunes 7.7 is one example).

Any archive of old files is either something intended for Apple or service provider access only, so they're deliberately not made easy to find by general users, or are a remainder archive in the Akamai distributed-server network, as is the case with the m7z.net domain, and really aren't supposed to be there at all.
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User profile for user: mike loeven
mike loeven Author
User level: Level 1
0 points

Jun 24, 2010 11:23 AM in response to varjak paw

ok maby apple doesent like to make it easy to find legacy versions but that doesent answer why. also version tracker and oldversions have the links but most of them are broken or removed so appearantly apple even goes so far as to use dmca takedowns to remove old versions from circulation. i really dont see a point to this. havin legacy versions available is quite usefull when you work with older machines or if your testing reverse compatability
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User profile for user: varjak paw
varjak paw
User level: Level 10
170,206 points

Jun 24, 2010 11:44 AM in response to mike loeven

No one here can answer the question as to why Apple has chosen not to make legacy versions of their applications available except in certain cases. We're all just fellow users and have no insight into what drives their decisions.

I agree that legacy versions may indeed very useful, but Apple hasn't asked me for my opinion on the matter. 😉
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legacy versions of apple software and the mysterious appldnld.m7z.net site

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