[Macpartners] Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" Update

[Albert Willis]

Summary
-------
Since the release of Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" on April 29, IS&T, in  
collaboration with other departments, labs and centers, has done a  
thorough investigation of what it offers, which is quite a lot.  
Spotlight, Dashboard, VoiceOver and Automator are some of the  
features that will prove to be very useful in the MIT environment as  
Tiger matures.

With any new operating system, especially one that has as many under- 
the-hood changes as Tiger, there are going to incompatibilities and  
bugs. About two weeks after Tiger was released, Apple released Mac OS  
X 10.4.1, which fixed many issues (see below). It's likely that Apple  
will release frequent updates as they did when 10.2 and 10.3 were  
initially released.

Information Services and Technology recommends that administrative  
users, especially those that depend on SAPgui for Mac OS X should not  
upgrade to Tiger at this time. No version of SAPgui functions  
properly on Tiger--some transactions don't work or can cause SAPgui  
to crash or corrupt data. While Apple and SAP are working on the  
issues, no one has offered an estimate for when the issues will be  
resolved. Some SAP users can use SAPweb or Citrix (to access the  
Windows version of SAP) until SAP works properly on Tiger; please see  
the Mac OS X release notebook (http://web.mit.edu/swrt/releases/ 
macosx10.4/) for additional information.

In addition, departments, labs and centers that rely on VPN, Kerberos  
authentication at login or OpenAFS should not upgrade to Mac OS X  
10.4 at this time, as these applications and features don't currently  
work and we don't have a timeframe when they will.

IS&T continues to gear up support for Mac OS X 10.4. Support from the  
Computing Help Desk is currently limited to help getting connected to  
MITnet and basic configuration issues. As supported application  
issues become resolved, more in-depth support will be available.

Below are details on application and operating system issues in  
Tiger. Please contact the Mac OS X release team at macosx- 
release at mit.edu if you have further questions.

Supported Application Issues
----------------------------
* SAPgui
We expect a future version of Mac OS X 10.4's Java Runtime  
Environment to
address some reported problems and allow SAP to release SAPgui 6.40  
for Tiger.
(It is possible that Apple could correct problems in a different  
version of the
Mac OS X 10.4 Java Runtime Environment which would allow an earlier  
version of
the SAPgui to run on Tiger - but neither Apple nor SAP have committed  
that they
will do this.)

* Virex
Virex 7.2.1 works on Mac OS X 10.4. However, the newest versions  
(7.5.1 and 7.6) are not compatible with Mac OS X 10.4. McAfee has  
indicated that version 7.7 will be compatible, but has not announced  
when it will be available.

* VPN
Cisco has released version 4.6.03 of their virtual private network  
(VPN) client, which is now compatible with Mac OS X 10.4. However,  
this version works only on single processor machines--dual processor  
machines are not supported. IS&T expects to release this version of  
the VPN client soon and will follow up with the dual processor  
version when it is available.


Operating System Update and Issues
----------------------------------
* Kerberos authentication at login
Several departments take advantage of a feature of Mac OS X (10.2 or  
greater) that grants Kerberos tickets to a user upon a successful  
login when using their Kerberos principal and password. This feature  
isn't currently available in Mac OS X 10.4. In addition, upgrading a  
10.3 machine that uses this feature to 10.4 disables the ability to  
login to the machine at all. MIT's Kerberos development team and  
Apple are working to resolve this problem.

* Certificates
Mac OS X 10.4 adds more stringent handling of certificates compared  
to previous versions of Mac OS X. As a result, while certificates  
work, enabling Safari and Mail to work securely, the default behavior  
is not to recognize the MIT Certificate Authority (also known as the  
MIT CA) as trusted. We are investigating methods for resolving this  
issue.

* OpenAFS
OpenAFS is an open-source software project that enables Mac OS X  
users to use AFS, a network filesystem. MIT's Athena uses AFS;  
OpenAFS allows users to easily access their Athena home directories,  
for example. At this time, OpenAFS doesn't work on Mac OS X 10.4. A  
future version of OpenAFS is expected to function properly on 10.4.

* 10.4.1
On May 16, Apple released Mac OS X 10.4.1 which includes improvement  
for:
     - file sharing using AFP and SMB/CIFS network file services
     - using DHCP in wireless networks
     - user login when accessing LDAP and Active Directory servers
     - core graphics including updated ATI and NVIDIA graphics drivers
     - synchronization with .Mac
     - Address Book, iCal, Font Book, Mail, and Preview applications
     - Dashboard widgets: Address Book, Flight Tracker, Phone Book, and
       World Clock
     - compatibility with third party applications and devices

Detailed information on 10.4.1 is available at http:// 
www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n301517.


Al Willis, for the Mac OS X release team

     Deb Bowser
     Joey Gottinger
     Jonathan Reed
     Lee Ridgway
     Helen Rose
     Matthias Thorn
     Karl Witt



______________________________
Albert Willis
Macintosh Platform Coordinator - Software Release Team
Information Services and Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
awillis at mit.edu

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