Trying to upgrade from Yosemite to either El Capitan or Sierra
Hi. I have an iphone 11 that apparently needs a Mac OS of El Capitan or newer in order to download photos/sync. My mid2013 Macbook Air currently runs Yosemite10.10.5. I could not find on Apple Store the original El Capitan 10.11.0 to install. Any of the subsequent 'updates' could be downloaded but did not successfully install (the message said that 10.11.0 was required first). After reading on the forums that the original installer for El Capitan no longer exists on Apple Store, the next option is to upgrade directly to Sierra. I downloaded Sierra, clicked to install it, and got the green tick saying 'install successful'. When I re-started the laptop and checked "About This Mac", it still shows Yosemite as the operating system. grrrrr
I'm obviously missing a major component in my understanding of how all of this works. All I want is to download my photos from the iphone 11 to my laptop.
Can someone please help with why my laptop is not showing any of these OS upgrades?
Thank you very much in advance.
MacBook Air 13", OS X 10.10