[95] in sw-release-announce
Recommendation: Mac OS X Transition Update - February 2002
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Albert Willis)
Tue Feb 12 16:04:16 2002
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Message-Id: <a05101405b88f2e5b61ab@[18.152.6.21]>
Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2002 16:03:37 -0500
To: itpartners@MIT.EDU, macpartners@MIT.EDU, sw-release-announce@MIT.EDU
From: Albert Willis <awillis@MIT.EDU>
Cc: itag@MIT.EDU, infosys@MIT.EDU
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At the Macworld conference in January, Apple announced that by the
end of January, all new Macintosh computers would startup into Mac OS
X by default. Information Systems recommends that users receiving
these machines change the startup behavior to default to Mac OS 9.x;
instructions for making this change are at
http://web.mit.edu/is/help/macos/macosx/boot9.html. Users needing
further assistance should contact the Computing Help Desk at
computing-help@mit.edu or at x3-1101.
At this time, IS recommends that Macintosh users, including those
receiving new machines, continue to use MacOS 9.x as their primary
operating system. It is expected that Mac OS 9.x will remain a viable
operating system for the foreseeable future. Currently, a number of
core applications supported by Information Systems are not available
on or compatible with Mac OS X at this time. For instance, the
centralized desktop backup service provided by Information Systems,
TSM, is currently incompatible with Mac OS X. Other supported
applications whose Mac OS X versions are in their first release
continue to undergo testing for reliability and functionality.
Although Mac OS 9.x remains the supported operating system at this
time, we are continuing to evaluate what it will take to support Mac
OS X in the future. We will be providing monthly updates on our
progress in that area.
IS Support Status
-----------------------------------------------
Information Systems and our IT colleagues are committed to Mac OS X
and intend to roll out support in a thoughtful, phased approach.
Early support will likely be for network connectivity, printing, and
working in the Classic environment in Mac OS X. Later phases of
support will encompass an integrated suite of applications and
functionality. We are working to determine what that minimum
combination of applications should be. A support announcement will
need to take into consideration vendor support statements, dependent
application compatibility issues, local support for the desktop,
infrastructure requirements and support for any of the
enterprise-wide applications.
IS support for Mac OS X at this time is limited to issuing hostnames
and IP addresses for Mac OS X machines, and providing assistance with
network connectivity for students living in residence halls. For
students in residence halls, RCC's will assist you with getting your
Mac OS X machine connected to and operating on the network, but they
are currently not able to help with extensive troubleshooting or
running MIT applications which have not been tested under OS X.
If you need to use your computer for any MIT administrative tasks or
rely on support from Information Systems for the applications you
use, we recommend that you do not transition to Mac OS X at his time.
IS Activites
-----------------------------------------------
The Mac OS X Release Team continues to perform testing, and to
develop training materials and documentation in anticipation of
support for Mac OS X. In addition, this past November IS launched a
Discovery effort to examine the impact and timing of adding support
for Mac OS X.
A survey conducted by the Mac OS X Discovery team in January showed
that most Macintosh users planned to migrate to Mac OS X in the next
4-12 months, with most of them waiting for support from Information
Systems and for their critical applications to run natively on Mac OS
X.
* For an overview of test results for IS supported software and
applications critical to MIT business, see
http://web.mit.edu/swrt/macosx/matrix.html
* For information on release efforts, see http://web.mit.edu/swrt/macosx.
* For an overview of the work of the Discovery Team, see
http://mit.edu/is/discovery/MacOSX/
Self-support Resources
-----------------------------------------------
Help is available through a user-supported mailing list,
macosx-help@mit.edu. A list of other useful resources is available on
the Mac OS X web pages at
http://web.mit.edu/is/help/macos/macosx/#info.
Questions or Comments
------------------------------------------------
If you have questions or comments, please contact the Mac OS X
Discovery Team at macosx-discovery@mit.edu. For more information on
Mac OS X and the release effort, please refer to the release
notebook, at http://web.mit.edu/swrt/macosx.
Regards,
Ginny Williams and Al Willis
Product Release Coordinators for Mac OS X
