[Macpartners] Information Services & Technology Announces Support for Mac OS X 10.3

[Albert Willis]

Introduction
------------

Good afternoon,

Information Services & Technology is announcing that Mac OS X 10.3 is 
certified for use by MIT's faculty, staff and students. Starting today, 
IS&T is providing technical support, training and documentation for 
users who wish to use Mac OS X 10.3 as their primary operating system 
on supported Macintosh computers.

Mac OS X 10.3 includes technologies that enables users to better 
utilize MIT's infrastructure: several network applications, including 
SSH (secure shell) now support Kerberos for Macintosh 5.0, which is 
integrated into Mac OS X 10.3; and a new security framework which 
allows Safari 1.2 users to access secure web pages using personal 
certificates.


Other features of interest to the MIT community include:

-- new and faster version of the Finder
-- X11, which allows the use of X Windows applications on Mac OS X 10.3
-- better integration with Windows networks: Active Directory 
authentication; improved SMB printer and server support
-- integrated PostScript to PDF conversion
-- latest Unix technologies: improved NFS, FreeBSD 5 commands and 
libraries, latest scripting languages

Apple has documented many of the 150 new features of Mac OS X 10.3 at  
http://www.apple.com/macosx/newfeatures/.


Known Issues
------------
IS&T recently released Eudora 5.2.3 R2 which addresses several issues 
on Mac OS X 10.3. IS&T is currently working on releasing Eudora 6.x 
which is the only version of Eudora that's supported by Qualcomm to run 
on Mac OS X 10.3.

IS&T has documented several issues with Mac OS X 10.3 that users should 
be familiar with at http://itinfo.mit.edu/article?id=6767.

Obtaining Mac OS X 10.3 Licenses
--------------------------------
IS&T is making a separate announcement regarding 500 additional 
licenses for departments, labs and centers and 300 new licenses for 
students. Additional information on obtaining licenses is available 
from the Volume and Site License Software pages at 
http://web.mit.edu/is/products/vsls/mitmacos/.

Deciding About Upgrading
------------------------
Mac OS X 10.2 remains fully supported; in general, IS&T recommends that 
departments, labs, centers and individuals continue to run Mac OS X 
10.2 unless they are fully prepared to deal with some of the possible 
issues with upgrading to Mac OS X 10.3:

   -- installation of Mac OS 10.3 and operating system and security 
updates
   -- being prepared for possible application incompatibilities and 
work-arounds
   -- learning the differences between a previous version of Mac OS X 
and Mac OS X 10.3

In addition, licenses should not be requested for machines that don't 
meet IS&T requirements (documented at 
http://web.mit.edu/is/products/vsls/mitmacos/) or are scheduled to be 
replaced within 1 year.

Operating System Updates
------------------------
IS&T recommends that customers should use the Software Update feature 
of Mac OS X 10.3 to install the latest operating system, security and 
application (such as Safari 1.2) updates from Apple. By installing 
these updates, users will be running Mac OS X 10.3.2, the most current 
version currently available. More information is available on Mac OS X 
10.3.2 at 
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macosxupdate_10_3_2.html. 
Information on Safari 1.2 is available at http://www.apple.com/safari.

Getting Help
------------
Documentation for Mac OS X 10.3 is available at 
http://itinfo.mit.edu/product?vid=592, including information on system 
requirements, upgrading from earlier operating systems and known 
issues.

Additional documentation:
Getting started with Mac OS X 10.3: 
http://itinfo.mit.edu/article?id=6881
Upgrading to 10.3  from 10.2 or 10.1: 
http://itinfo.mit.edu/article?id=6889
Upgrading to 10.3 from 9.x: http://itinfo.mit.edu/article?id=6939
Security Recommendations: http://itinfo.mit.edu/article?id=6938

If you have a question or need assistance, please contact the Computing
Help Desk at computing-help at mit.edu or x3-1101.

Al Willis for the Mac OS X Release Team
   Deb Bowser
   Yang Gu
   Janet Littell
   Lee Ridgway
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text/enriched
Size: 4226 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://mailman.mit.edu/pipermail/macpartners/attachments/20040309/d11238b8/attachment.bin