Q: Want to upgrade to Mavericks, but download is no longer available.
Hi,
For quite a while, I have been downloading games and some programs that I would like to use on my computer, but since I haven't upgraded since Mountain Lion, some of those programs are not available to me; neither is Mavericks.
I am a tad bit hesitant to upgrade to El Captain; a majority of the reviews are negative, and as petty as this sounds, I do not like the new style of icons, layouts, etc. I have upgraded my phone to iOS 9.something, and ever since my phone has been acting up, loads slowly, portrait orientation freezes… I believe this is where my El Captain fear started to grow, since the style is the same.
I have read up on upgrading to only Mavericks, but anything that was said was posted over a year ago, and I wasn't sure if there was any new information. I no longer have the option to upgrade from the App Store, and I am not allowed to download Mavericks from a faulty server due to Apple's terms and contracts.
So, my question is (after that rant), has anything new come up regarding old updates? Would I be able to go into the Apple Store personally and ask for the Mavericks update? Or, dare I say it, suck it up and download El Captain and deal with the negative outlooks on it?
Thank you to anyone who helps me; I've been dreading about upgrades for quite a bit.
iMac, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5)
Posted on Jul 2, 2016 3:38 PM
One option is to create a new partition (~30- 50 GB), install the new OS, and ‘test drive’ it. If you like/don’t like it it, you can then remove the partition. Do a backup before you do anything. By doing this, if you don’t like it you won’t have to go though the revert process.
Check to make sure your applications are compatible.
Applications Compatibility (2)
El Capitan 10.11 Compatibility information
Open Disk Utility, select your hard drive (step 1), then the Partition tab (step 2), and select the partition. Using the /// at the bottom move it up (step 3) until the size box decrease by about 50 GB. Select the newly created space and hit the + button (step 4). Name it something and select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as the format (step 5). Then hit the Apply button(step 6). Download the installer from the App Store and when it starts, point it at the new partition. You might want to make a copy of the installer outside the Applications folder to avoid having to re-download it in the future. Once installed, go to System Preferences/Startup Disk, select the new partition and reboot. Test away.
Posted on Jul 3, 2016 9:00 AM