[Macpartners] Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) Support Announcement

[Patrick McNeal]

Good Afternoon,

Information Services and Technology (IS&T) is pleased to announce  
support for Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard).  Leopard provides many new  
features, including Spaces, Quick Look and Safari 3.0. An extensive  
list and explanation of these features can be found at Apple's Leopard  
site:

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

Support
-----------------------------
After reviewing Leopard, IS&T has determined that we cannot support  
two specific features: Time Machine and Boot Camp.  In particular,  
IS&T continues to recommend TSM for backup of Institute data.

Known Issues
-----------------------------
There are no major known issues at this time. Users can check the Mac  
OS X 10.5 release notebook for updated information:

http://mit.edu/swrt/releases/macosx/

Licensing & Obtaining Leopard
-----------------------------
MIT has a limited number of licenses for MIT faculty and staff to use  
on Institute owned equipment. Please contact your software liaison to  
see if licenses for your department have already been acquired. Also,  
contact your local support provider to check if there may be specific  
known issues with support for Leopard in your area. To find out who is  
your software liaison visit:

http://web.mit.edu/ist/topics/software/msca-osliaisons.html

In order to stretch MIT's resources as far as possible, IS&T requests  
that you only install licenses on machines that will be used for at  
least one more year - through the end of 2008 - and meet the following  
system requirements:

     * A Macintosh desktop with G5 or Intel based processor
     * A Macintosh laptop with a 1.67GHz or faster PowerPC G4 or Intel- 
based processor
     * 1GB (or more) RAM
     * 9GB of available hard disk space (10GB if you install the  
developer tools)
     * DVD Drive

MIT faculty and staff can obtain licenses and download the installer  
by visiting IS&T's Mac OS X 10.5 distribution site at:

http://macosx.mit.edu

Students, faculty and staff can obtain copies of Mac OS X 10.5  
(Leopard) for personal use via a number of retailers, including Apple  
and Amazon.

Upgrading
-----------------------------
IS&T strongly recommends that you make a complete backup of your hard  
drive and run Disk Utility's "Repair Permissions" on your boot volume  
before attempting to upgrade. If you are upgrading from a previous  
installation of Mac OS X, IS&T also suggests an Archive and Install  
installation of Leopard. Administrative departments should check with  
their local computing support agencies before proceeding with upgrades  
on their own.

Instructions on performing an Archive and Install can be found here:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107120

For more detailed information on installing and setting up Mac OS X  
10.5, see:

http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/Leopard_Install-Setup.pdf

Training
-----------------------------
To learn about the changes to Mac OS X 10.5, we encourage users to  
attend the upcoming IS&T Leopard Quick Start on Tuesday, March 18.   
Quick Starts are free to members of the MIT community and last  
appropriately one hour.  For additional training opportunities, see  
IS&T's training website:

http://web.mit.edu/ist/topics/training/

Getting Help
-----------------------------
The Mac OS X 10.5 product page, which includes links to a number of  
other documents, can be found here:

http://itinfo.mit.edu/product.php?vid=767

If you have a question or need assistance, please contact the  
Computing Help Desk at computing-help at mit.edu or x3-1101. Support from  
the Computing Help Desk consists of assistance with getting connected  
to MITnet and basic configuration issues.

Updated Software
-----------------------------
IS&T has released new versions of the following applications with  
Leopard support:

     * Kerberos Extras rev 14
     * SAPgui 7.10r1.2
     * TSM 5.5
     * VirusScan 8.6
     * VPN Client 4.9.01.0100

Users of these applications should download updated installers from  
the MIT Macintosh Software download page:

http://mit.edu/software/mac.html

--Patrick for the Leopard Release Team

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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