[Macpartners] Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) - Current Status and Recommendation to WAIT

[Patrick McNeal]

Good evening,

Beginning tonight, October 26, Apple started selling copies of their  
newest operating system Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard".

Based on Information Services and Technology (IS&T) preliminary tests  
on pre-release versions, we recommend that Macintosh users WAIT to  
upgrade and continue to use Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) while the new  
release is being reviewed and tested.

WHY WAIT?
----------------------------
With any new operating system, especially one that has as many under- 
the-hood changes as Leopard, there are going to be incompatibilities,  
bugs and an associated learning curve.  Some of the products that are  
important or critical to productive and safe computing at MIT that do  
not work include: TSM 5.4.1.2, SAPgui 7.00 Rev 3, VirusScan 8.5,  
OpenAFS 1.4.4 and MIT's current VPN Client.  For more information, and  
a list of other known issues and workarounds, please see:

  <http://mit.edu/swrt/releases/macosx/#issues>

NOTE:  As in past releases, it is expected that Apple will release  
frequent updates that will address some of these incompatibilities.

LIMITED SUPPORT
----------------------------
The IS&T Computing Help Desk is currently offering limited support on  
getting connected to MITnet and basic configuration issues for new  
machines arriving with Leopard installed. As critical application  
issues are resolved, more in-depth support will be available.

NEW FEATURES AND LICENSING
----------------------------
Leopard has many new features such as Spaces, Quick Look and Safari  
3.0. An extensive list of features can be found at Apple's site:

  <http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/>

As a licensee of Mac OS X, IS&T is authorized to distribute a limited  
number of Mac OS X 10.5 licenses to MIT faculty and staff.  These  
licenses are not available for distribution at this time however we  
are working with Apple to make them available as quickly as possible.   
We will share more details once they become available.

Questions regarding Mac OS X 10.5 should be directed to the Software  
Release team at swrt at mit.edu.

--Patrick
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Patrick McNeal
Macintosh Platform Coordinator - Software Release Team
Client Support Services, Information Services and Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
N42-250E
Cambridge, MA 02139
+1 617 253-0196
mcneal at mit.edu