Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" Update – Recommendation to Wait

10/15/2009

IS&T, in collaboration with members of the MIT community, continues to evaluate and test Mac OS X 10.6. Our recommendation remains unchanged: Macintosh users should WAIT to upgrade and continue to use Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard).

Why Continue to Wait?
Though some initial issues with 10.6 have been resolved, there are still products critical to productive and safe computing at MIT that have not been fully certified. These include TSM 5.5, SAPgui 7.10 Revision 1.2, and PGP Whole Disk Encryption 9. Users who rely on these applications are strongly advised not to upgrade until updates are released.

IS&T is actively working on release versions of these applications that support 10.6 and will update the MIT community as they become available. For more information, and a list of other known issues and workarounds, see the Software Release Team's Mac OS X 10.6 Wiki [certificates required].

Limited Support
The IS&T Computing Help Desk continues to provide limited support on getting connected to MITnet and basic configuration issues for new  machines arriving with Snow Leopard preinstalled. More in-depth support will be available as supported application issues are resolved.

Licensing
IS&T has made Mac OS X 10.6 available for early adopters among MIT faculty and staff. For more information and to obtain licenses and download the software, visit IS&T's Mac OS X 10.6 Distribution Site.

If you have questions regarding licensing or the Snow Leopard Download Site, direct them to vsls-help@mit.edu.

Getting Help
If you are an early adopter and need help in getting connected to MITnet or basic configuration setup, contact the Computing Help Desk at 617.253.1101 or send email to computing-help@mit.edu.

Questions about Snow Leopard can be sent to macosx-release@mit.edu.