The fall of Apple's legacy support page... but all is not lost!

So, anybody who has been a collector of 'Old World' Macintosh paraphernalia for some time would probably be familiar with or at least know about Apple's download page for  legacy software dating back to the 68k era... as far back even as to include a complete set of downloadable gsOS System 6 disks for the last Apple II, the abruptly aborted //gs.

What you may not know, however, is that the page which browses to the FTP site has been taken down now for a number of years... in fact I did not even realise this until recently. Whilst this is unfortunate, and realistically a bit of a dick move, at the end of the day, Apple probably do not actually care about their heritage or those who like to sit back and enjoy a simpler time, as it does not make them any money doing so. So from a corporate standpoint, it makes a tiny degree of sense, although I admit I do struggle to see how they gain anything substancial even in terms of hosting cost, by removing a few gig of material. That's right... the contents of the entire Apple legacy FTP library take up 7.4 gig when compressed. Not only that, as it stands some of the files remain intact and hosted off the original server anyway, in dribs and drabs, so it's not like they have even done the job properly.

I can hear you ask now, "Oh yeh and how the bloody hell do you know that the library is only 7.4Gb smartarse??"... Well, friends, the answer to that is because, as I type this, I have the entire Apple legacy FTP site downloading onto my G5's secondary hard drive as a .zip file.

Yep... that's right. How you ask? Well... some anonymous smart cookie somewhere in 2012 had the forethought to get hold of the entire site and then reupload it to an archive site, which technically isnt really illegal. Anyway, that link is here...

https://archive.org/details/download.info.apple.com.2012.11

You can choose to browse through the files individually at this page, or you may download the entire collection of site files if you wish, as I currently am, as a ZIP file.

Another option is this link, which is yet another dump of the entire library being hosted abroad and independantly by a fellow 68kmla member...

http://asa.max1zzz.co.uk/

And this one here for something a little different...

http://ftp.iinet.net.au/pub/macintosh-centro/MacOS/ 

Some links for System 6 and 7 software I beleive specific to Mac Plus? 

http://www.gryphel.com/c/sw/system/index.html

And finally, a page to download the OS9 updates...

http://www.mediafire.com/?64da0g3iih922

 
Whilst the actual download.info.apple pages are sort of still up as a directory structure, the site is largely now an empty shell full of broken links and dead ends, so as such I have not even bothered to include a link.

Anyway, I may at some stage also decide to upload and host my own mirror at some point in time, and when and if this happens, I shall fill everybody in. Anyway, Feel free to download away from wherever, as the more copies of this old software that exist, the stronger the chance that it will still be readily available in say 10 years time.

OMT