File this one under “Obscure problems that could ruin your day.” TidBITS reader Randy Singer alerted us that due to an expired certificate, OS X installers downloaded prior to 14 February 2016 won’t work.
The best way to download Mac OS X High Sierra is via a direct link download. This is primarily because Apple has hidden the installer from the Mac App Store. This means that users that search for the installer will not find anything if they have a newer version of Mac OS. Users can download the app via a direct link and then install it that way. For the last few weeks, I’ve hardly been using the Mac Pro, as I’ve been avoiding coming to sit and work at the desk, favouring working from the laptop in the lounge in the brief period. Jul 26, 2012 Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion was released in the Mac App Store Yesterday. Here’s how to do an upgrade install from OS X 10.7.4 Lion to Mountain Lion. Nov 01, 2013 Or maybe the Mavericks installer became corrupt during the process? Whatever the situation, you can easily re-download OS X Mavericks from the Mac App Store. Re-Download OS X Mavericks Installer on a Mac Running 10.9. If the Mac is already running OS X Mavericks, redownloading the installer is extremely easy. In case you have OS X Snow Leopard or Lion, but want to upgrade to macOS High Sierra, follow the steps below: To download Mac OS X El Capitan from the App Store, follow the link: Download OS X El Capitan. On the El Capitan, click the Download button. Next, a file Install OS X El Capitan will download into the Applications folder.
The Apple Worldwide Developer Relations Intermediate Certificate is required for all apps in the Mac App Store, including OS X installers. When used to sign an app, the certificate enables OS X to confirm that the app has not been corrupted or modified by an attacker. This certificate expired on 14 February 2016, causing error dialogs and preventing some apps from launching. Most affected apps have already been updated with the new certificate. But if youdownloaded an OS X installer in case of trouble, you may be in for a surprise the next time you try to use it.
Happily, this is an easy problem to fix ahead of time:
Delete any old OS X installers in the Applications folder or in other locations (be sure to look on external hard drives too; if the App Store detects an old installer, it won’t let you get a new one). These installers have names like Install OS X El Capitan and Install OS X Yosemite.
Open the App Store app by choosing Apple menu > App Store.
Click the Purchased tab. Enter your App Store password if prompted.
Scroll down to the OS X installer you want and click Download.
The new installers are signed with a certificate that expires on 7 February 2023, so it will be quite a few years before Mac users are affected again.
Those who have created any bootable install disks for OS X will need to recreate them with the new installers. Dan Frakes wrote a guide to creating OS X 10.11 El Capitan install disks for Macworld.
There is one qualification to all this. Apple won’t allow a newer Mac to download versions of OS X that aren’t compatible with that Mac, so on a 27-inch iMac with Retina display, for instance, the App Store app refuses to let you download Mac OS X 10.7 Lion.
Mac Os X 10.7.4 Installer Mac App Store Won T Open
Mac Os X 10.7.4 Installer Mac App Store Login
If you are in the middle of an OS X install and get tripped up by the expired certificate, Randy Singer offers a suggestion on how you can work around the problem quickly, without having to download a new installer:
Mac Os X 10.7.4 Installer Mac App Store Download Free
In the OS X Installer, choose Utilities > Terminal.
Enter sudo date 0201010116, press Return, and enter your password.
Quit Terminal and continue the install.
Mac Os X 10.7.4 Installer Mac App Store Free
That Terminal command sets your system date to 1 February 2016 — before the certificate’s expiration — so the installer can continue. Once you have completed the installation, visit System Preferences > Date & Time to reset the system date. Thanks to Randy for the heads up on this issue and the workaround!
As noted, this expired certificate affects more than just OS X installers — a number of Mac App Store apps suffered from it as well. If downloading a new version of an affected installer isn’t an option for some reason, Rich Trouton noted in 2012 that there’s an -allowUntrusted flag for the command line installer utility that might help, as might Greg Neagle’s flatpkgfixer.py tool.
Mac Os X 10.7.4 Installer Mac App Store Software Updates
As indicated by those posts from 2012, this is only the latest in a series of expired certificate snafus that have rendered Mac App Store apps unusable — the last one hit in November 2015 (see “The Mac App Store Is Breaking Apps,” 12 November 2015). Put bluntly, Apple needs to do a better job in managing its Worldwide Developer Relations Intermediate Certificate and alerting both users and developers to the implications of any expiration or revocation. Having this sort of sporadic failure is decidedly a strike against “It just works.”