how to download yosemite now that el capitan is out

You can't. Now that Apple has released El Capitan Yosemite is no longer available.

What about people whose hardware will ONLY support Yosemite and NOT El Capitan? Apparently Apple just not care about people at all anymore. I am on a recent Macbook Pro 2013 on Mountain Lion, but haven't had time to upgrade because I have to do "something" (not sure what) to my photos (port them over first so they will still run on my still older Snow Leopard Mac (and on the OLDEST Leopard Mac, still in use by family members) before migrating them to Mavericks, then Yosemite. AND NOW THIS??!! I am so, so frustrated and angry at Apple for this kind of behavior. It is all about the profits with them. Their answer to it all seems to be: "Tough **** to anyone who still wants--or can only upgrade to--a prior OS, or to anyone who has anything else to do with their life besides constant "do it right now or else" upgrades. You're outta luck. Hey, here's an idea--go out and buy a fresh brand new Mac so you can have a more recent OS--this one, the only one we'll let you have." Love the product, hate the company's pushing stuff on everybody with no regard for their personal circumstances." Pfew! WHAT corporate values? None that I can see.

If your computer will run Yosemite, but will run El Capitan. The hardware requirements are identical. Try going to the App Store and downloading El Capitan.

Like everyone else, you had a year to download Yosemite at any time and then cancel the installation if you didn't want it installed then. Once downloaded, you could then copy the full, downloaded installer in the Applications folder to another drive to save it, make a bootable full flash drive installer, or not even save it at all. Once "purchased", it stays in your list of App Store purchases and could be retrieved at any future point.

Apple did the same thing with Mavericks when Yosemite was released. It shouldn't have been even a slight surprise to anyone that Yosemite disappeared with El Capitan's release. Don't blame Apple for your own procrastination.

Have you ever thought about checking things out and getting your facts straight before going off on your half cocked rant?

It is much less embracing when you do that first.

j2day wrote:

What about people whose hardware will ONLY support Yosemite and NOT El Capitan? Apparently Apple just not care about people at all anymore. I am on a recent Macbook Pro 2013 on Mountain Lion, but haven't had time to upgrade because I have to do "something" (not sure what) to my photos (port them over first so they will still run on my still older Snow Leopard Mac (and on the OLDEST Leopard Mac, still in use by family members) before migrating them to Mavericks, then Yosemite. AND NOW THIS??!! I am so, so frustrated and angry at Apple for this kind of behavior. It is all about the profits with them. Their answer to it all seems to be: "Tough **** to anyone who still wants--or can only upgrade to--a prior OS, or to anyone who has anything else to do with their life besides constant "do it right now or else" upgrades. You're outta luck. Hey, here's an idea--go out and buy a fresh brand new Mac so you can have a more recent OS--this one, the only one we'll let you have." Love the product, hate the company's pushing stuff on everybody with no regard for their personal circumstances." Pfew! WHAT corporate values? None that I can see.

Feel better now? Stamp your feet as well if you don't. Yosemite is gone. If your Mac can run it then it can run El Capitan. Not rocket science. There is nothing Yosemite can do that El Capitan cannot, so you point is..well.pointless.

Good Luck

Pete

Yes, Pete, I do feel better, although I am sorry I let my frustration spill over into a post. Lesson learned. But my comments are not pointless. People have lives outside of the digital world. I gave a very reasonable explanation to Kurt as to why I don't have time to upgrade so often, but forum admins said it contained "inappropriate comments," so they deleted it. You might be able to empathize with my difficulty had you been able to read it. I'm older, not a computer wiz, and am caregiver to 90-year-old parents living an hour away from me, spending over half my time in a home with no internet connection. I won't elaborate, but instead of risking--and looking up how to fix--the glitches and incompatibilities that occur during upgrades, I am studying Alzheimers, congestive heart failure, peripheral artery disease, brain seizures, and negotiating the healthcare system while hospitalizing my Dad four times this year, while trying to preserve and share my Dad's photo library with him before he forgets who he is. And the admins are right, this isn't the place for venting, but a place to find helpful advice and tips to try. (Although I'm not clear why they allow name-calling and belittling of inexperienced users; I reacted very poorly to Kurt saying I "procrastinate" and had "a year" to move to Yosemite, although I probably deserved HIS reaction to my initial rant.) Please, everyone, accept my apology, and let's just drop it, and I'll behave with better decorum in the future.

I gave a very reasonable explanation to Kurt as to why I don't have time to upgrade so often, but forum admins said it contained "inappropriate comments," so they deleted it. You might be able to empathize with my difficulty had you been able to read it.

Unfortunately, it must have been removed before I had an opportunity to read it.

Believe me, I do understand that many users can't, or wisely don't jump on a new major OS release for darn good reason. I don't either. My Mac is a production machine for my in home business. Immediately putting an untested OS onto such a Mac is about as stupid a thing a user can do. Look at the comments on Extensis' site regarding Suitcase Fusion in regards to El Capitan. Absolutely amazing how many "professionals" jumped on El Capitan on day one, apparently without a restorable backup, then blame Extensis for their poor judgement. It isn't until you get down to Don't B. Arookie's comment that someone finally says the obvious.

Two weeks before El Capitan's release, Quark sent out emails to all of their users telling them NOT to upgrade to El Capitan right away. Because Apple could possibly make important programming changes to the OS even just a day before its release, they were waiting until the official release of El Capitan before they created any updates to XPress and their other products so they didn't have to possibly do the work twice.

I reacted very poorly to Kurt saying I "procrastinate" and had "a year" to move to Yosemite, although I probably deserved HIS reaction to my initial rant.)

I apologize if it sounded like a scolding. I was trying to be as emotionally flat as I could be with only text to use for conveyance. Sometimes no matter how you word things, it can still be taken more than one way by the reader.

It certainly is a bit of a nuisance for users to have to get an OS while it's available, but it also makes sense from Apple's point of view. Mainly, what did users pay for it? Nothing. So what are they taking away from users? The answer is still nothing. It's not like you paid for an HD TV (or pick anything with an actual cost), and then one day a representative of the company who made the product shows up at your door and just takes it. "Sorry, it's obsolete. Buy a new one." As far as Apple is concerned, each OS release is an improvement over the previous ones. And more importantly, Mountain Lion, Mavericks, Yosemite and El Capitan all have the same hardware requirements. So why keep the other two free OS versions around? Use the latest and most improved version.

That thinking of "Use the latest and most improved version." of course doesn't help users who have software that won't run under the latest OS. Or in some cases, because the vendor went out of business or simply has no desire to supply updates to software you can't do without, may never run under anything but the last OS you could use it on.

I would download El Capitan now. When the download is complete, it will launch the installation process. Press Command+Q to quit. Then copy the installer to an external drive for future use, or even just delete it. Now that it's in your App Store account, you will always be able to retrieve it. Even if you wait until the next major release of OS X to install it.

Thanks for the answer Kurt! Finding Yosemite in my previously purchased apps did the trick.

I needed this work around as I'm using OS X on a production computer and have to run a version behind everyone else because of the software I use.

For those looking for the answer:

1. Go to the app store on your Mac

2. Click on the purchased tab and look through your previous purchases

3. Download OS X Yosemite

Apple did make it easy!

For decades Apple gave users the ability to download and install previous versions of its operating system. I have just now tried to upgrade to Yosemite. There are valid reasons not to go to El Capitan, such as dozens of user complaints that it is slow and buggy on certain older hardware that El Capitan supposedly is compatible with. The inability to acquire, by any means, a one-year-old, free OS is a stupid policy. So is the continual nagging to upgrade to El Capitan. Apparently, the Capitan believes it is in charge of all our Macs.

You should really take that up with Apple,who read post to these forum.

List the problems reported to Apple by many users in the past five years. Calculate the percentage of the problems that were corrected by Apple within six months. If the result is greater than 2%, I will be very surprised.

It is bad policy to immediately make the most recent OS unavailable. I don't know of any OS-making company that does this except for the new, unimproved Apple. Apple's beta testing has been substandard for more than a decade. If a user upgrades and finds that the combination of computer and attached hardware doesn't work with a new OS, then the user needs a way to revert. For example, most users installed Yosemite via the App Store. They have no hard drive or DVD disk copy of Yosemite for reinstalling. Using a clone backup may not work because it may have taken weeks for the user to discover that the El Capitan-related problem cannot be fixed. (The problem with Outlook 2011 is an example.) Unless the user has an archived clone backup, there is no way to go back to Yosemite. Screwing over users with such problems is unacceptable, especially since removing all traces of Yosemite was a lot more work than leaving them in place.

So simple it is...

😁

If you have downloaded Yosemite before, you will find a link to re-download it in the "Purchased Items" tab in the App Store.

Here's my scenario. I'm still using Snow Leopard 10.6.8, but I'm forced to move onward (but not forward). I did a clean install of El Capitan on a separate hard drive. It worked fine. Then, I used Migration Assistant and restarted with a set-up that I hoped would work. I discovered that Outlook doesn't work. I did some reading and found that Outlook works with Yosemite, and all the post-Snow Leopard apps I need work on Yosemite. I'm happy, until I learn that there's no way to get a legit copy of Yosemite or its predecessors. I'm stuck. If I go to El Capitan, I must spend hours switching from Outlook to Mail and iCal and Address Book. I don't like any of those Apple programs.

I'm tired of Apple fanboys who, by reflex, support every boneheaded decision Apple makes. Apple has made plenty of blunders, but the failure to sell or provide anything but the newest OS version is one of the worse. I've used Apple computers since 1983 (the Apple IIgs), so I've had plenty of time to see both the brilliance and ineptitude at Apple. The brilliance wins out by a large margin, but that doesn't mean that poor decisions should get a pass.