
Only Sierra requires you have something newer than Snow Leopard. You should be able to go directly from Snow Leopard to any version up to and including El Capitan. I also tried it on a mac that already had 10.7 and the same happened and also tried it over a different internet connection.
Apple are completely useless and are just sending me round in circles to no avail. I picked back up on it recently and discovered you now have to upgrade from 10.7 which you have to buy via the app store which i did and yet again the same problem. I then tried again with El Capitan in Sept 2016 again then it was FREE and had exactly the same problem. I contacted apple and they tried a few things via remote viewing but nothing and comms collapsed.
Now, it was a matter of learning how to invoke the appropriate command to have my laptop mount the Linux server.For almost 2 years now i have been trying to upgrade the OS on my Mac from 10.6.8 initially it said you could upgrade for FREE to Yosemite which i tried in Nov 2014 it would get a little way into the download and then error the icon would appear in the dock and just say waiting you can restart and go back into Purchases in the app store and click resume and again it would get a little way in and so the same. Next, I needed to create a new folder on my laptop which would serve as the mount point. Both FUSE for OS X and SSFHS were now installed. I ran into an issue here where Mac OS X refused to install the package because SSHFS comes from an “unidentified developer.” To get around this, you need to override the Gatekeeper in Mac OS X, which can be as simple as right-clicking on the package and selecting “Open” from the context menu. I installed SSHFS by double-clicking on the downloaded file.
I downloaded the latest version of SSHFS for OS X at the FUSE for OS X web site.
There is pretty standard Mac OS X stuff it went without a hitch.
I installed FUSE for OS X on my laptop by double-clicking the disk image, then double-clicking on the installation package. I downloaded the latest version of FUSE for OS X at the FUSE for OS X web site. After SSH had been set up: Fuse For Mac Os X Mojave