10.8 to 10.9

I started on a Mac Plus and have owned 9 macintoshes and it still amazes me that upgrading the OS can waste two days of time in this day and age. Granted I am doing legacy upgrades, but there is so much BS in these discussions it is really frustrating.

You state that I can upgraded to 10.11. El Capitan from 10.8.5 Mountain Lion. The download page states I cannot.

It says, "This version of OS X 10.11 cannot be installed on this computer." So *** is the answer?

iMac 27-inch, Late 2012, 3.2 GHz Intel core i5, 8GB memory, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 675MX 1024, OSX 10.8.5.

Well that sounds like a fine plan, but the older computers cannot communicate with the app store because they are older OS' and old browsers, and you cannot update the browser because the new versions are incompatible with the computer. No that is not a solution. You see, that is what I am talking about. Everything is connected to shopping in some way nowadays that you cannot even maintain or upgrade your own machine. It is planned obsolesce run amok. Just make the software available for download like Canon does with their cameras, etc. You can get drivers going back for years. I've spent close to $100K on apple stuff since 1985 and they just keep rendering things useless for no reason but greed.

Maybe i can go to the apple store and have them download it on an "older computer." I'm sure they'll be perplexed since they operate off of scripts and this problem would be a confounding challenge to them.

I apologize, I had also posted in the FCP discussions and thought the reason for the change was above. By the way,

I just bought the installers on disk so might even just stick with Maverick, possibly El Capitan. Two button clicks and the problem was solved for $20. Why won't apple sell it? It still sells Snow Leopard.

The reason I want to go Maverick or El Capitan is to run Final Cut Pro X and FCP 7 on the same machine. I could do a different drive install to solve this as well.

The reason I do not want to run Sierra, I know I can, is that the Final Cut Pro 7 Sierra compatibility table lists it is an unknown or untested. I don't want to be the tester and need to go back. In Maverick it runs, and in El Capitan it runs, but I believe compressor and motion are questionable in EC. (Cannot even locate that table on this site again. Just like adobe. You don't know if you are in the shopping site or the non-commercial tech part of the site. Type in "El Capitan software compatibility" and do a search. So far off it is just more time wasted.)

I'm a video producer for a health care training company and I cannot risk not being able to open and edit and go years back to update certain videos. I still run a G5 with an Xserve Raid to go back to things. Why? Because even though projects can be opened in subsequent versions of FCP, all the old effects and transitions can corrupt sequences. If that happens and renders disappear, things are gone forever. We are currently working on a corporate-wide e-learning platform and old videos and content still hold up when played inside training modules on an ipad.

You say "If your computer is compatible with Sierra, then you can only update to Sierra." That's bullcrap. Who gets to make that decision?

TWO NEGATIVES DOES NOT MAKE A POSITIVE. I want El Capitan to test it with FCP7. It does not remain available because MY MAC DOES NOT MAKE IT AVAILABLE. IT IS A DEAD BUTTON The apple store doesn't get to decide the order sequence of my upgrades. I solved my problem by buying Maverick and El Capitan on Ebay. So much simpler.

The first paragraph in the link for upgrading to El Capitan that I posted also reads:

OS X El Capitan remains available for Mac computers that can't upgrade to macOS Sierra, or that need to upgrade to El Capitan first

Sierra 10.12 is able to be purchased and downloaded to my machine but El Capitan isn't. I need to run FCP7 which runs on El Capitan but questionably on Sierra, so I guess my problem cannot be solved.