Lion installer available to public today, (also Mountain Lion)

[DeltaMac]

Maybe this is interesting to those who keep track of old OS X system installers, as I do
Just noticed that Lion (OS X 10.7) full installer is now available at Apple.com/Support/Downloads page

Mac OS X Lion Installer - Apple Support

Mac OS X 10.7 Lion is available for older systems that are not compatible with the latest version of macOS

support.apple.com

Also Mountain Lion...
Download is the 2-step process that is used for Yosemite, El Capitan, and Sierra (if you still download direct from Apple)
Until now, I had to be on a Mac that could boot to Lion to download the installer, and also had to be on the App Store app on an older Mac, showing my (old) purchase of Lion years ago. That's apparently not needed now, and Apple seems to have dropped any attempt to sell that old system

 

[velocityg4]

It's about time. With OS X being free an all. I don't get why they don't make this option available for all versions. Also remove the system date requirement. It'd make creating multi-version installation USB much simpler.

 

[loby]

Interesting that Apple made these available and not other older OS's.

It shows though no one is buying them anymore, there is still a need for them on older systems. Glad Apple understands this and provides a way to get it easier if needed.

I still use Mountain Lion for some older programs; Lion on occasion with a few older Macs that are still in use (just reapplied the CPU thermal paste on two of them and they are running again now like a Champ!. Prefer Snow Leopard if you talk about "old" OS X's (but that is another story).

El Capitan has that time date code issue if you want to install it also. Have to turn the date back to 2016 to install.

Do us a big serve Apple and get rid of that time date code restriction! We all know there is no security updates etc. for these older OS's and you are not held accountable for them anyway, so just help us out eh?

 

[velocityg4]

Interesting that Apple made these available and not other older OS's.

It shows though no one is buying them anymore, there is still a need for them on older systems. Glad Apple understands this and provides a way to get it easier if needed.

I still use Mountain Lion for some older programs; Lion on occasion with a few older Macs that are still in use (just reapplied the CPU thermal paste on two of them and they are running again now like a Champ!. Prefer Snow Leopard if you talk about "old" OS X's (but that is another story).

El Capitan has that time date code issue if you want to install it also. Have to turn the date back to 2016 to install.

Do us a big serve Apple and get rid of that time date code restriction! We all know there is no security updates etc. for these older OS's and you are not held accountable for them anyway, so just help us out eh?

It probably has to do with licensing issues. They likely contain third party software or code they can't include for free. As I recall that was an issue with some classic Mac OS versions. It's old abandoned code no one really cares about. As evidenced by vintage Mac sites hosting old versions. But Apple can't just host it for free in their downloads.

 

[sdwaltz]

Maybe this is interesting to those who keep track of old OS X system installers, as I do
Just noticed that Lion (OS X 10.7) full installer is now available at Apple.com/Support/Downloads page

Mac OS X Lion Installer - Apple Support

Mac OS X 10.7 Lion is available for older systems that are not compatible with the latest version of macOS

support.apple.com

Also Mountain Lion...
Download is the 2-step process that is used for Yosemite, El Capitan, and Sierra (if you still download direct from Apple)
Until now, I had to be on a Mac that could boot to Lion to download the installer, and also had to be on the App Store app on an older Mac, showing my (old) purchase of Lion years ago. That's apparently not needed now, and Apple seems to have dropped any attempt to sell that old system

Please tell me how you pulled this off...for fun, I'm trying to revive an old white MacBook (early 2008 pre-unibody) with a SSD I cannot for the life of me figure out how to create a bootable USB using this .pkg. All instructions on the internet seem to use the .app, which Big Sur won't let me install from the .pkg.

Any ideas?

 

[DeltaMac]

Assuming you want Lion... If you mount the .dmg that you downloaded, you see the .pkg.
That's an installer file. You run that to install, which at that point simply copies the files to make the installer app, and places the app in your Applications folder. Big Sur won't let you do the install - probably because the Mac that you are using does not support Lion. When you get the Lion installer app in your Applications folder (which is your first goal!) don't run the installer from there. The installer app will delete itself if you let the install complete. Make the bootable installer from that app, then save it somewhere on a different drive.
It's quite simple to make the bootable USB -- if you are on an older Mac, running something older than El Capitan. You can do this from Leopard or Snow Leopard, for example, using Disk Utility to do a Restore from the InstallESD.dmg to your USB volume. The InstallESD.dmg file is located in the SharedSupport folder inside the Lion Installer app.

As you can see - it will help you - a lot - if you have an older Mac (that also supports Lion), with a somewhat older system.
If you don't have another older Mac, other than the one you have on Big Sur -- do you have a working drive, with a system already on it? Maybe the old drive that you replaced with the SSD? Can you install THAT old drive in the MacBook, so you can make that bootable installer? Once you have THAT, (the external installer), then you should be OK doing anything you like with your old MacBook... I happen to have one of those here, too, among with another 8 or 9 Macs of various ages. Comes in handy for this kind of thing.

 

[L Caputo]

Has anyone actually tried to install Mac OS X Lion using this new free download from Apple.
I have downloaded the InstallOSX.dmg, opened that to the InstallOSX.pkg
When opening the InstallOSX.pkg the Install app throws up an error.
'the package was signed with a certificate that has expired. If you acquired this package recently,
it may not be authentic. Do you want to continue with the installation.

the certificate that has expired is the Software Update certificate and it expired on the 24th October 2019,
the date that started all this nonsense from Apple having to repackage their installers for various OS X
and macOS installers, seems they have forgotten to do this for Lion.
However pressing Continue will allow the creation of the Install OS X Lion.app in the Applications folder.
All seems okay until you start the installation process, as the mac goes to verify the installer app but almost immediately rejects it with the error 'The software could not be verified. It could may have been corrupted
or tampered with during downloading.

Thinking that to be the case have downloaded and downloaded again only to get the same message.

Has anyone experienced this and is there a workaround, others experiencing the same thing posting Apple Support Communities.

Here is an extract from the Install log.

Oct 11 19:18:12 Metal-Box Install Mac OS X Lion[329]: IATool launched
Oct 11 19:18:12 Metal-Box Install Mac OS X Lion[329]: Using product <OSSoftwareUpdateCatalogProduct> from product keys 11G63_ServerEssentials at distance 25
Oct 11 19:18:12 Metal-Box Install Mac OS X Lion[329]: Connected to IATool 584860
Oct 11 19:18:13 Metal-Box Install Mac OS X Lion[329]: Preventing machine sleep.
Oct 11 19:18:13 Metal-Box Install Mac OS X Lion[329]: Using product IA_PKSecureNetEnabledProduct <file://localhost/Mac%20OS%20X%20Install%20Data/> at distance 5
Oct 11 19:18:13 Metal-Box Install Mac OS X Lion[329]: Using mutable product path: /Mac OS X Install Data
Oct 11 19:18:14 Metal-Box Install Mac OS X Lion[329]: Retrieving 1 packages (0.000 GB)
Oct 11 19:18:15 Metal-Box Install Mac OS X Lion[329]: Retrieved package com.apple.pkg.CompatibilityUpdate (http://swcdn.apple.com/content/down...0ieui2fnr3/MacOS_10_7_IncompatibleAppList.pkg)
Oct 11 19:18:17 Metal-Box Install Mac OS X Lion[329]: Error verifying ESD Payload PKG: The operation couldn’t be completed. (PKProductErrorDomain error 0.)
Oct 11 19:18:17 Metal-Box Install Mac OS X Lion[329]: pkgdmg is not signed or altered.
Oct 11 19:18:17 Metal-Box Install Mac OS X Lion[329]: pkgdmg validation has failed.
Oct 11 19:18:17 Metal-Box Install Mac OS X Lion[329]: Stopped operation queue with Error Domain=IAErrorDomain Code=101 "The software could not be verified. It may have been corrupted or tampered with during downloading." UserInfo=0x10055bea0 {NSLocalizedDescription=The software could not be verified. It may have been corrupted or tampered with during downloading.}
Oct 11 19:18:31 Metal-Box Install Mac OS X Lion[329]: Failed to remove mutable product /Mac OS X Install Data

 

[DeltaMac]

Yes, I have installed Lion, a bit more than a month ago, using that installer downloaded from Apple Support.

I just tried it all again. Downloaded the .dmg. Ran the .pkg file to get the installer.app (ignoring the expired certificate for now)
But, I went one further step: I created a bootable USB installer from that app. DiskMaker app still works very nicely for that. DiskMaker X 3.0.4 (4,2 MB)
I booted to that USB that I just created. Installed Lion on an older iMac that I keep around, just for those kind of uses. Installed and booted to Lion without problem.
You will likely want to fix the security certificates through the Keychain, mostly to allow Safari to work better.

 

[L Caputo]

Yes, I have installed Lion, a bit more than a month ago, using that installer downloaded from Apple Support.

I just tried it all again. Downloaded the .dmg. Ran the .pkg file to get the installer.app (ignoring the expired certificate for now)
But, I went one further step: I created a bootable USB installer from that app. DiskMaker app still works very nicely for that. DiskMaker X 3.0.4 (4,2 MB)
I booted to that USB that I just created. Installed Lion on an older iMac that I keep around, just for those kind of uses. Installed and booted to Lion without problem.
You will likely want to fix the security certificates through the Keychain, mostly to allow Safari to work better.

Hello, thanks for getting back to me. I have just installed Mac OS X Lion 10.7.5 using a bootable USB created through
DiskMaker X 3.0.4.
I still think you should be able to install directly from the Install OS X Lion.app and not have it return the error, I tried the same with the Mountain Lion installer and it also returns the error.
Whereas the Yosemite, El Capitan and macOS Sierra installer apps all install direct without the need for bootable USBs, especially as with the macOS Sierra installer you can't create a bootable USB without getting the error, Volume/MyVolume is not a valid mount point, there is a workaround for that.
Just goes to show the sloppy software engineering going on at Apple these days.

 

[DeltaMac]

hmm... I haven't used the installer app as a direct install for a number of years. I greatly prefer external drives, as the install process is (usually) much faster (I don't have to copy the app to the drive, or wait for a download). And, it's way too easy to just plug in a multi-volume installer drive (which has all system installers from Leopard to Monterey beta), boot from the needed system installer. Much faster than copying the installer app to the boot volume, and allows me to fully wipe-install, if that is needed, all while booted to the installer. I have a variety of external drives with multiple system installer volumes, some with only older systems, some with recent systems, or simply flash drives with one system installer (I usually give those away to friends/customers who ask)
The Sierra installer is easy to fix, as you have discovered (?) Not sure if you can point at "sloppy software engineering" for that - just things that have crept in to working copies over time, and sometimes don't get caught. One that HAS been fixed recently is the system time reset that used to be needed before installing El Capitan. That seemed to disappear at about the time that Lion and Mountain Lion were released as free downloads last summer. The most recent download of El Capitan now installs without changing anything - so some things do get fixed. Some don't.

I just completed a personal project, with bootable system volumes (not installers, but full system installs), everything from Leopard to Monterey, all on one single drive, so 13 boot partitions on a single SSD. So, I had to deal with several challenges, making sure that all my system installers were the most current versions. All the boot systems have the same desktop, so it shows how the various visual elements in the Finder have changed over the last 14 years.

 

[avz]

Mountain Lion installer came in handy when I upgraded my Snow Leopard partition to Mountain Lion on a MacBook4,1 thanks to parrotgeek’s NexPostFacto. It even preserved the Legacy FileVault which I used on a Snow Leopard.

 

[L Caputo]

hmm... I haven't used the installer app as a direct install for a number of years. I greatly prefer external drives, as the install process is (usually) much faster (I don't have to copy the app to the drive, or wait for a download). And, it's way too easy to just plug in a multi-volume installer drive (which has all system installers from Leopard to Monterey beta), boot from the needed system installer. Much faster than copying the installer app to the boot volume, and allows me to fully wipe-install, if that is needed, all while booted to the installer. I have a variety of external drives with multiple system installer volumes, some with only older systems, some with recent systems, or simply flash drives with one system installer (I usually give those away to friends/customers who ask)
The Sierra installer is easy to fix, as you have discovered (?) Not sure if you can point at "sloppy software engineering" for that - just things that have crept in to working copies over time, and sometimes don't get caught. One that HAS been fixed recently is the system time reset that used to be needed before installing El Capitan. That seemed to disappear at about the time that Lion and Mountain Lion were released as free downloads last summer. The most recent download of El Capitan now installs without changing anything - so some things do get fixed. Some don't.

I just completed a personal project, with bootable system volumes (not installers, but full system installs), everything from Leopard to Monterey, all on one single drive, so 13 boot partitions on a single SSD. So, I had to deal with several challenges, making sure that all my system installers were the most current versions. All the boot systems have the same desktop, so it shows how the various visual elements in the Finder have changed over the last 14 years.

The issue with creating a USB installer for macOS Sierra is corrected by inputting a command into Terminal which in effect changes one in the Install macOS Sierra.app/Contents/Info.plist, so I would class that as sloppy software engineering, especially as it is two years since the error was introduced, and I myself and others have informed Apple and those running the Discussion Communities many times. Two minutes work for Apple swapping out the Info.plist with the correct version number, from 12.0.6 to 12.0.3 and reposting the InstallOS.dmg wouldn't be hard.
From the introduction of the revised El Capitan installer in October 2019 I never had a problem with having to change the system date back prior to Oct 2019 it would install direct from the Install OS X El Capitan.app that was the point of introducing the revised installers for Yosemite, El Capitan and macOS Sierra.

After the expiry of certificates for their older OS's in October 2019, Apple introduced these revised installers for Yosemite, El Capitan and macOS Sierra, but have not revised the copies they keep on their Recovery Servers
where people are still two years later reporting the 'no packages available for install' error, which can be overcome
by resetting the system time through Terminal while in Recovery, that to me suggests sloppy software engineering.

As for more recent OS's and the release of incremental version updates and Security Updates that require Apple to introduce supplemental updates or revise updates silently I wonder how much does Apple actually take notice of feedback from its Developer and Public Beta testers. Safari 15.0 has been out for about two weeks now and people are still having problems connecting to websites especially financial institutions.

As yourself I tend to use bootable USBs for my various installers but do feel that if Apple are going to introduce revised versions for their older OS's they should be able to work direct from the Install app, many users are not
aware or confident of creating and using bootable installers and think that if you get an Install ******.app
that should be capable of installing the intended OS. Also for many downloading the InstallOSX.dmg, opening to InstallOSX.pkg and then getting the installation window leads them to believe this is actually installing the chosen
OS as it is not very clear to them that it is creating the Install ******.app in the Applications folder. Yes I know the box in the installer says this will take only a few MBs of space and only takes two minutes to achieve but most folk don't read the small print and have expected the OS to be installed.
These are the things that lead me to sloppy software engineering , the old mantra was 'it just works'
now I feel it is more like 'it works, just'.