October 26, 2007
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?
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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
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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
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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@mit.edu.
