March 13, 2008
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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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@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
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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
