[Macpartners] Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" Update

[Bryant C. Vernon]

Hi Kuba,

If I remember correctly, you started this thread by questioning the time it takes MIT to release software (operating systems in particular) to the MIT community. I am happy that the discussion has finally focused on what really matters to you: obtaining IS&T funded licenses to run Mac OS X 10.4 on your users' machines. For future reference, you can contact swrt at mit.edu to obtain this information. Granted, you won't cause as much as a stir, but I think your question will be answered much more efficiently.

Although I do not speak for all of IS&T, nor even for all my team, I would like to thank you for your feedback. In order to excel, organizations require constructive criticism to help focus their efforts on areas where they can improve. Additionally, criticism can also serve as a segue into learning why a process or situation is the way it is. Fortunately for everyone, your feedback is proving to be a bit of both. On the one hand, I think IS&T will formalize the process for distributing licenses to early adopters, like yourself and those people you support. Right now, we do it in some cases but not in others. I suspect that this inconsistency will change for the better. 

On the other hand, a number of people, such as Steve Dowdy, Kerem Limon, Bill Cattey, etc. have chimed in to explain the complex dynamics of the work IS&T puts into releasing an operating system and the financial constraints under which it occurs. I have learned a lot from reading their e-mails. I wanted to add the following information to what they have said, because when engaging in a discussion about expectations of performance, you need to identify useful baselines and reference points. 

The problem is that few reference points exist. For example, finding meaningful metrics about OS X 10.4 adoption rates, etc. within the academic or corporate world is difficult if not impossible. Personally, over the past week I have been unable to find any formal study of Tiger adoption rates. 

Fortunately, I was able to find a study about adoption rates for Windows XP SP2, an update to the Windows operating system to which Kerem Limon likened the OS X 10.4 update. I think this comparison a valid one. The study shows that a year after the release of SP2, less than 25% of 136,000 surveyed corporate machines had upgraded to SP2, which, unlike Tiger, was a free upgrade. Like Tiger, however, SP2 offered a plethora of improvements, especially in security and wireless networking. 

Nevertheless, many IT departments decided not to rush SP2's release to their organizations because the benefits of the new and unknown hardly ever outweigh the benefits of the old and well tested. It takes time to test and verify that business critical applications work properly on new operating systems. I suppose one could quibble over exactly how much time, but Microsoft itself said it expected a deployment period of 12-18 months for SP2 in large organizations, and I think the same deployment period is a reasonable one for deploying Tiger in a large organization. For a large organization, MIT generally adopts new operating systems and deploys them much faster than the average corporation, and I would also venture than the average academic institution, although I do not have any way to support the second claim except through anecdotal evidence. Also keep in mind that unlike centralized corporate IT departments, which typically dictate the deployment of software across all corporate machines, MIT IS&T and other centralized academic IT departments have to support and deploy multiple platforms, OSes, and versions of OSes. So, not only is MIT large, but it is also diverse--two factors that significantly increase the complexity of supporting new OSes.  

>From your email, it seems that you are responsible for testing an environment that consists of 50 Macintosh machines, so it's relatively easy for you to verify that an OS works in your environment. For every new OS update, however, IS&T has the onerous task of testing a multitude of configurations, environments, and applications, and it relies on a project team of five who in turn rely on volunteers from other parts of IS&T and the MIT community to assist in that testing and verification effort. You can contact that project team via e-mail at macosx-release at mit.edu if you would like to provide feedback about your experiences with Tiger. I guarantee that the team would welcome your input as the team is ultimately responsible for releasing a product that affects thousands of Macintosh users, including the fifty or so that you oversee.

Supporting or encouraging users to migrate to a new operating system before verifying that business critical applications (such as SAP, VPN, etc) work properly on it is bad business and irresponsible. Therefore, I expect that IS&T is not going to alter the way it tests and verifies operating systems any time soon. The fact that Tiger indeed broke SAP, VPN, and a couple of other applications reinforces the necessity of catching these problems before they negatively impact our customers. What IS&T may alter, however, is the way it reaches out to and engages community members, especially early adopters such as yourself. I suspect changes will include more visible communications and the distribution of licenses to early adopters. I assume that the licenses would be distributed in a way that minimizes the feeling of competition over a scarce resource. The last thing we want to do is precipitate a premature rush on licenses because customers feel that they must either hoard licenses for future use or miss out entirely.     

Thanks again for your criticism. As a member of the team that can make the most of your feedback, I am grateful for your candor. I also appreciate the position that you are in: having fifty people ask you daily for the upgrade must drive you up the wall. I am confident that by collaborating and maintaining a candid conversation this issue will be addressed in a way that is fair, timely, and satisfactory to all. 

All the Best,
Bryant

P.S. The link to an article on the XP SP2 survey: http://news.com.com/Businesses+slow+to+move+to+SP2/2100-1012_3-5650923.html

----------------
Bryant C. Vernon
Product Release Coordinator - Software Release Team
Information Services and Technology (IS&T)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Room W92-147
Cambridge, MA 02139
t: 617-253-5103
f: 617-258-8736
m: bcvernon at mit.edu
  
________________________________________
From: Kuba Tatarkiewicz [mailto:tatarkie at lns.mit.edu] 
Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2005 3:23 PM
To: Albert Willis
Cc: Bill Cattey; Gerald D Burke; macpartners at MIT.EDU; itpartners at MIT.EDU; sw-release-announce at MIT.EDU; ed-tech at MIT.EDU; it-lead at MIT.EDU; itag at MIT.EDU; is&t at MIT.EDU; Jerry Grochow; Sean Thompson; J Maynard Gelinas
Subject: Re: [Macpartners] Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" Update

Al,

It is Tuesday afternoon and after reading again your letter from Friday I realized that probably MIT does not really have yet licenses for Tiger to distribute.

If this is not so, please let me know what stops you from sending us just the formal statement that we can install the system: I do not need any support, I do not need media, I just need a legal statement that MIT is giving 50 Mac users at LNS the right to upgrade from 10.3 do 10.4 of Mac OS X.

Regards,

Kuba


On Jul 15, 2005, at 4:22 PM, Kuba Tatarkiewicz wrote:


Al,

Quick question: most of LNS Mac users do not need SAP. Is it possible to get a formal confirmation from MIT IST that we do have site license for Tiger and start installing it?! User are asking me daily about it...

Regards,

Kuba

The short answer is that we can work with you on getting Tiger licenses for your users. Now that 10.4.2 has been released, it resolves many more problems. Colleagues that are away this week will be back on Monday; we'll discuss it and get back to you.

Have a nice weekend.

  -- Al


______________________________

Albert Willis

Macintosh Platform Coordinator - Software Release Team

Information Services and Technology

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

awillis at mit.edu


----------------------------------------
Kuba Tatarkiewicz Ph.D.
Assistant Director for Computer Services
MIT Lab for Nuclear Science
Phone 617 452 2430
Fax 617 258 6591
24-030D MIT
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139-4307
----------------------------------------