If you could not manage to download version 9.6.1 while it was still available through the App Store, you were out-of-luck. It is their game, and you have to play by their rules, they were saying.

How did they accomplish this? In two ways: (1) by making sure that iPhoto before 9.6.1 was not going to launch under the newest Mac OSes and (2) by removing version 9.6.1, the last update, from the App Store so that it could not be downloaded. Apple had apparently adopted a rather arrogant policy in which they were compelling iPhoto users to make the transition to Photos and to the iCloud by locking iPhoto users out of using the latest iteration of iPhoto anymore. When Apple executives released the new application called Photos in the spring of 2015, they left open a very short window in which iPhoto fans could download and install version 9.6.1 of iPhoto, which is the end of the line for that application.