[Macpartners] Mac OS X 10.3 License Announcement

[Albert Willis]

Introduction
------------
Mac OS X 10.3 "Panther" will be available both as a retail product and 
pre-installed on new machines beginning on Friday, October 24. Mac OS X 
10.3 contains 150 new features; more information on Mac OS X 10.3 is 
available at http://www.apple.com/macosx/.

Information Systems’ license agreement with Apple entitles MIT faculty 
and staff to request licenses and installation media for Mac OS X 10.3. 
Due to the limited number of licenses that are available, licenses will 
be distributed following these guidelines:

-- Support providers for faculty or administrative staff should not 
request licenses for machines which are are no longer supported as of 
June 30, 2003: any Macintosh with a G3 processor; any Macintosh with a 
G4 processor running at less than 450 MHz. See 
http://web.mit.edu/swrt/announcements/de-support-fy03.html for 
information on recently de-supported machines..

-- A user that is eligible for an upgrade to Mac OS X 10.3 from Apple 
should pursue that and not request a license from Information Systems. 
All Macs purchased on or after October 8, 2003 are eligible to be 
upgraded to Mac OS X 10.3; any Power Macintosh G5 regardless of 
purchase date is also eligible. See 
http://www.apple.com/macosx/uptodate/ for information on how to obtain 
an upgrade for these machines.

Licenses for Mac OS X 10.3 can be requested from the Volume License 
Software Distribution team at http://web.mit.edu/is/products/vsls/ 
beginning on October 24. We are waiting for media to arrive from Apple; 
there will be a delay in fulfilling orders initially.

Support
-------
Information Systems has begun gearing up to support Mac OS X 10.3; 
however, support will be on a "best effort" basis for the initial 30 
days of availability. Members of the MIT community that choose to 
upgrade during this period will be "on their own" and expected to use 
self-support resources such as e-mail lists and the world wide web if 
they encounter problems. The e-mail list macosx-help at mit.edu is a 
public list for users to help each other; members of lists such as Mac 
Partners may also use those for help.

Information Systems recommends that users that require a greater level 
of support should delay upgrading to Mac OS X 10.3 until Information 
Systems announces test results and additional support resources.

Users that purchase new machines with Mac OS X 10.3 pre-installed will 
be able to receive support for configuring their machines to connect to 
MITnet, print to networked printers and connecting to file servers.

Please feel free to contact the Software Release Team at swrt at mit.edu 
if you have any questions regarding Mac OS X 10.3.

______________________________
Albert Willis
Macintosh Platform Coordinator
Software Release Team
MIT Information Systems