<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><BR><DIV><DIV>On Jul 12, 2005, at 9:52 AM, Stephen Dowdy wrote:</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Lucida Grande; font-size: 11px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: auto; -khtml-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -apple-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><P class="MsoNormal"><FONT size="2" color="navy" face="Arial"><SPAN style="font-size: 10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy; color: rgb(0, 0, 128); font-size: 13.3333px; "><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 128); font-family: Arial; font-size: 13.3333px; ">I’m sure Jerry Grochow would love to have his budget increased so that he could provide more services and you wouldn’t have to wait over 2 months to get full support of Tiger. Perhaps you should take your argument to Apple for releasing a OS upgrade that breaks so many applications. No one would hesitate to bash Microsoft if they released an new OS that causes so many problems. </SPAN></SPAN></FONT></P></SPAN></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><DIV>Just to shed some light on the situation, most of the problems that are attributed to Tiger are really 3rd-party software vendors that have had developer releases of Tiger since July 2004 and did not have updated products when Tiger shipped on April 29, 2005. Yes, Tiger had a number of problems when it shipped, which it to be expected when a new operating system ships. In the nearly twelve years I've worked here, I have yet to see a bug-free release of an operating system. Compared to some previous operating system releases and technology transitions (NT to Windows 2000, Mac OS X 10.0, Windows 95/98/ME come to mind), this one isn't so bad. However, high profile applications such as SAPgui are affected, so it seems worse than it really is and that it's happened during end of the fiscal year buying and desktop renewal.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>It's also problematic that developers don't follow Apple's guidelines. For example, Apple has said in the past to not to use kernel extensions unless you really really need to, since they could break when the kernel changes, which it does with every operating system update (like going from 10.4.1 to 10.4.2). The other reason to not to create kernel extensions is, because they live in kernel space, they can crash the entire system if they misbehave. Of course, McAfee and Cisco used kernel extensions for Virex and the VPN client and that's the main reason why they didn't work under Tiger, although they had ample opportunity to discover that prior to Tiger's release. Of course a pre-release operating system is a moving target as well; however, Tiger went golden master about 2-3 weeks prior to it's release, so something could have been done.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Part of the issue is that Apple is pushing the envelope--this is the fifth major release of Mac OS X in 4 years. Every major release has many new features and under-the-hood changes. Actually, Apple has slowed down somewhat--they were shipping a new release every 12 months; the schedule is now every 18 months. They've already mentioned that Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" will be released at around the same time as Longhorn--late 2006 or early 2007. Being on this schedule makes it tough on some developers to keep up.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>The reason that IS&T invests the time and effort into testing is because we've learned that companies sometimes ship programs that contain bugs and cause problems and would increase the burden on our support resources. We often have to wait for an updated version of an application before we can safely release it. For example, we've been waiting for a version of Virex that we felt comfortable releasing since last summer.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Finally, IS&T probably needs to develop a process that addresses the different types of users on campus. Self-supporting early adopters and support providers could have earlier access to a new operating system than others than require a higher level of IS&T support. I'm hopeful that's something we will investigate implementing at some point.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>We have more testing to do, but we may be able to give an update on the status of Mac OS X 10.4.2 and related issues next week.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV> -- Al</DIV><BR><BR><DIV> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Lucida Grande" size="3" style="font: 11.0px Lucida Grande">______________________________</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Lucida Grande" size="3" style="font: 11.0px Lucida Grande">Albert Willis</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Lucida Grande" size="3" style="font: 11.0px Lucida Grande">Macintosh Platform Coordinator - Software Release Team</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Lucida Grande" size="3" style="font: 11.0px Lucida Grande">Information Services and Technology</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Lucida Grande" size="3" style="font: 11.0px Lucida Grande">Massachusetts Institute of Technology</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Lucida Grande" size="3" style="font: 11.0px Lucida Grande"><A href="mailto:awillis@mit.edu">awillis@mit.edu</A></FONT></P> </DIV><BR></BODY></HTML>