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The OSX seminars have been canceled
due to low attendance.
ince OSX is by now very common and fully
supported in the Institute this news page is no longer necessary.
Please use the regular help pages for obtaining OSX support.
As some of you may know a new version of MacOSX 10.3 a.k.a. Panther
was
recently released. Please do not install it on Skirball computers
that were
set up by us since we don't know yet how well it works with our
software.
There is always a slight chance that such a major OS update may
break some
programs. Once we're certain that it works and once we have our
distribution
tools ready well we'll start deploying it as new installation as
well as
start upgrading previous installations.
If you installed it on your personal/home computer we'd like to
hear from
you about the experience. If you have few minutes tell us how the
upgrade
went and give us the configuration of your computer and what programs
you're
using. Let us know if the update broke anything or if the process
was smooth
and uneventful:)
Please send feedback to help@saturn.med.nyu.edu.
Hello all,
There has been a change in the Skirball IT OSX Seminars schedule.
We were supposed to repeat the Photoshop seminar next week, Oct
21st, but,
instead, Joe Frey from media Services will be talking about InDesign.
So
make a note: next week is In Design 2 for OSX seminar: making posters:)
Then, the following week, we'll repeat the Photoshop 7 seminar on
the 28th.
And, finally, we'll repeat the InDesign session on November 4th.
>From then on we will not be repeating the topics any more due
to a low
turnout.
There will be no seminars in December after the 2nd.
The schedule for next year is TBA but most likely we'll start at
the end of
January they'll be happening less frequently: we'll do a new topic
every
other week.
Below is the seminar schedule for the reminder of the year.
======================================================================
10/21 OSX: Using Adobe InDesign 2
10/28 OSX: Using Adobe Photoshop 7 (repeat)
11/04 OSX: Using Adobe InDesign 2 (repeat)
11/11 NO SEMINAR
11/18 OSX: Printing - adding, configuring & troubleshooting
printers
11/25 OSX: File Transfers - How to get stuff in and out of Medical
Center
12/02 OSX: File sharing - sharing files between Macs (and PCs too)
12/09 NO SEMINAR
12/16 NO SEMINAR
12/23 NO SEMINAR
12/30 NO SEMINAR - it's New Year's Eve:)
======================================================================
Cheers!
There will be no seminars for the rest of the summer due to the
fact that this is vacation time for many of us. We will start in
September again and probably will go over the basics again. We'll
send an email when we know for sure but the tentative date is September
9th.
The PowerPoint presentations from MacOS Xplained seminar are available
here.
Hello all!
As I promised couple of weeks ago we want to start gathering feedback
on the
OSX Seminars idea. I've mentioned few times, OSX is very different
from Mac
OS9 and there will be a learning curve. How difficult? It depends
on how
computer savvy you are and how much exposure to OSX you have had
already. If
you are an advanced user you should be able to figure things out
quickly but
others may have hard time learning OSX. Most of the user experience
under
OSX is different: from navigating your folders, dialog boxes to
printing and
connecting to servers.
We will not be able to answer individual "how to..."
and "ho do I do this and that in OSX" questions. We already
have some OSX
related Help Pages in place so that should help. However, I believe
that a
series of seminars should be very helpful.
We are planning the first seminar for next week, Wednesday, March
19th from
1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. in the 3rd floor Seminar Room. We will give
an
introduction to OSX: what it is, why it is important and why we
make such a
big deal out of the transition. We will also outline our migration
strategies and explain our OSX migration and support policies. We
expect
lots of questions regarding the migration process. However, if the
time
permits we may cover some basic OSX topics as well.
I strongly encourage you to attend and to give us feedback before
and after
the seminar. Transition to OSX will be a major task and it will
take a year
or more to complete. I can't stress enough what this transition
will mean to
the Institute. Everybody will have to switch to OSX sooner or later.
We are
ready to have these seminars weekly to help you learn OSX and make
the
switch as easy as possible and to address any possible questions
you may
have along the way.
We will also be able to have guest speakers from Apple for a couple
of
seminars during Spring. I have already confirmed that.
Please let us know what you think about this. If you have any particular
questions you can email them to us before. Also, we'd like to know
if you're
interested in attending. Even if you don't have any particular suggestions
or question but plan to attend send us a brief email to let us know
during
this week.
Hello all,
Due to hard disk failures and problems with our testing setup I
was unable
to complete the testing of OSX disk imaging and and installation
procedures
for OSX and Skirball keyed applications. Therefore, the start of
the
migration will be delayed by couple of weeks.
Cheers!
Greetings!
This email contains information on the status of OSX deployment
in the Skirball Institute. I advise you to read it carefully in
its entirety. I know it's long but it addresses, I hope, most questions
and uncertainties regarding OSX and outlines our plan (beta version!)
of migration to OSX and the associated issues we'll face. I welcome
feedback and questions. However, at this time I may not be able
to address all of them.
This and previous emails as well as more OSX info are/will be documented
on our Help Pages. Go to the Skirball main page, click on the Help!
link on the left then find the Mac OSX Info link in the sidebar
under the F.A.Q. section. Keep checking that page for more OSX info.
We are gradually beginning preparations for OSX deployment. Right
now we have a few remaining issues with Retrospect desktop backup
and keyed software that we need to work out before we take any further
steps. We hope these issues will be resolved in two or three weeks.
We will only support Mac OSX 10.2.4 and up.
***
Now, let me discuss some of the issues we will face and our preliminary
version of the migration plan.
OSX hardware compatibility
OSX requires a lot more computing power (CPU speed, amount of RAM
and hard disk space) to run at reasonable speeds than OS9 did. Also,
OSX display requires significant graphics power (Quartz Extreme
video acceleration) to display graphics fluently. OSX is optimized
for a G4 CPU and requires the following video cards:
- NVIDIA GeForce2 MX,
- NVIDIA GeForce3,
- NVIDIA GeForce4 MX,
- NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti or
- Any AGP-based ATI RADEON card (GPU).
A minimum of 16MB VRAM is required. OSX runs best with minimum of
512MB of RAM and at least 4GB of free drive space. Many older peripherals
don't work with OSX or their functionality is limited. This includes
many printers, scanners, media readers, etc. both SCSI and USB.
We cannot support OSX on computers that do not meet the basic requirements
to run OSX. This means the following machines will continue to run
OS9 for the duration of their usable life:
- All beige Macintoshes,
- All G3 based iMacs and Powerbooks,
- Early iBooks (a.k.a. clamshell models).
The following will be partially supported, as they can run OSX to
some degree but are very slow. If speed and stability become an
issue they'll need to revert to OS9:
- Blue-and-White G3 (B&W G3),
- Power Mac G4 from 350MHz to 500MHz,
- White iBook 500MHz.
OSX software compatibility
We will only support one operating system per computer. The reason
for that is that booting back and forth between OSX and OS9 often
causes problems such as corrupted Key Access preferences and disruption
in backup schedule. Also, running OS9 and OSX versions of the same
application can lead to corrupted documents. We will not support
Classic functionality within OSX. In other words, a machine will
need to run OSX only, with no OS9, a.k.a. Classic Environment installed
at all to avoid possible problems. Therefore, unless users are entirely
ready to run OSX as their only OS they will need to stay with OS9
for the time being. Be aware that some OS9 programs will not be
coming out for OSX. If you need to use such a program you will need
to keep an OS9 computer around.
OSX security and passwords
Mac OSX is a real UNIX based, multiuser operating system. It has
a fully functional Apache web server, ftp server, DHCP server (it
can bring the whole Skirball network down if used even on one Mac!)
and Telnet server plus Mac and Windows file servers built in. As
such, it is classified as a server and, as with all other UNIX machines,
Skirball IT must reserve the root passwords to itself for security
reasons. We will also reserve the names Admin and Administrator
as a user name for troubleshooting computers running OSX. You will
still be able to create a user for yourself with full administrative
privileges so you can install software on your computer but you
will need to call it something else. Your ability to use your computer
will no be limited nor hampered in any way by this.
Learning OSX
Mac OSX is a brand new operating system. Many familiar elements
of OS9 such as the Chooser, Application Menu, Tabbed Folders are
no longer featured in OSX. Others, such as the Apple Menu are modified.
There are several new features in OSX as well. Many common procedures
like connecting to servers, configuring printers even browsing your
folders are different now. This means that users will need to learn
all these changes and new features. We will not be able to provide
one-on-one help and and answer individual "ho do I...?"
calls. However, we have two solutions for this.
First: the Help Pages. I hope most of you are familiar with our
help pages:
/it/help/
http://saturn.med.nyu.edu/it
We have started extending many of the instructional pages to OSX
and will continue to do so. The help pages expand and grow constantly
and they should become your #1 source Mac OSX learning experience.
On these pages you will learn, for instance, how to connect to servers,
how to print or use FTP in OSX. OSX topics usually exists next to
corresponding OS9 topics so that's how you can find them. There
will also be a special OSX tips and tricks page and I will welcome
submissions from you:)
Second: OSX instructional seminars, weekly or biweekly. This is
just an idea right now and I will send another email in a little
while asking for feedback. Please take this seriously! I'm sure
this can be very useful for all of us and may save you hours of
frustration trying to figure things out. I'm still learning OSX
and I don't consider myself an expert yet, far from it... Many of
you have been using OSX for some time as well so you may want to
share your experiences with others as well. I believe this could
be a fun and effective learning experience for all of us. I may
even be able to invite someone from Apple for Q&A sessions.
We will also hold OSX Happy Hour in few months:)
Gradual OSX deployment
We would like to do this step by step to avoid problems that might
get out of hand and beyond our ability to address in a timely manner.
At first we'll ask for 10-15 volunteers who are computer savvy,
have recent, fully OSX compatible hardware and preferably some OSX
experience already, and use their computer exclusively, i.e. it's
not a common lab computer used by others. If they experience no
problems for four weeks or so we'll ask for another group of users
gradually lowering the experience and hardware requirements. We
will need to work on the details and will announce them when we're
ready. How fast this process goes will depend on the success of
each group of users as well as several other factors including,
of course, the unknown factors. These users will receive full support
from us as opposed to those few who are using OSX right now and
receive only basic support limited to network connectivity. It is
extremely important that this process of migrating from OS9 to OSX
is done gradually, slowly and in a controlled fashion. Too many
things can possibly go wrong to rush it.
We are gradually beginning preparations for OSX deployement. You
may notice some new pages covering MacOS topics, such as networking,
KeyAccess, etc and by all means read them and get familiar with
OSX procedures. We have also started testing Retrospect for OSX
and we will soon switch our backup stations form OS 9 to OSX if
everything works out fine. However, OSX is still not supported in
the Institute. Untill we have all support materials on line and
all software OS9 ready is the only MacOS we support.
I’d like to remind you all again that we do not currently
support Mac OSX in Skirball Institute. There are many problems with
OSX itself at this point in time, as well as some programs are still
either not out yet or have problems. Almost every OSX update introduces
as many problems as it fixes and breaks some programs as 10.2 did
with Toast, EndNote and many smaller
apps and utilities.
Basically OSX is still work in progress and until it’s finished
and polished we cannot use it in Skirball. We’re still testing
some applications and we’re not ready yet to integrate OSX
into our infrastructure. Right now OSX can’t be reliably backed
up, there some issues in other areas as Key Server and antivirus
software as well as many programs are simply buggy and troublesome.
Even apps like Word X and Dreamweaver MX have issues (some serious)
and I’m sure we’ll be discovering more problems as we
go on.
When all the issues are worked out we will begin gradual, planned
and controlled migration to OSX. This is not a simple “upgrade”
as from OS8 to OS9; this is a process that has to be done under
control. Many users will need new computers to run OSX as well.
Since OSX is very different from OS9 we are also considering running
instructional seminars to teach you the new features of OSX. All
this requires time and planning. We don’t know yet when this
migration will happen, as there are way too many unknowns.
Therefore, please do not install OSX on computers in the Institute.
If you need OSX for a specific purpose, such as to control an image
grabber or some other instrument, please let us know and we will
help you out.
If OSX is installed without the proper preparation it may result
in a disaster. I have seen and heard from people loosing files under
OSX either due to a bug in the system (data corruption) or user’s
lack of understanding of the new system.
If you run OSX and get in trouble will not be able to help you.
We know there are problems with OSX and we’re asking you to
stay away from it until we’re ready to roll it out and to
support it.
All new Macs come with OSX and boot by default into it. Please let
us know about every new machine so we can set it up with OS9 and
Skirball keyed applications.
Sorry about the lack of updates but but not much has happened. OSX
is still a mixed bag and we're not ready to deploy it yet and to
deal with support issues. OSX v.10.1.3 is a big step forward in
terms of features and stability. There are many problems though
that still need to be fixed. Classic is far from stable enough,
the X GUI is still sluggish, there are major bugs in OSX itself
and apps are coming out very slowly. Each Apple OSX update fixes
many bugs but creates new problems and breaks some drivers and applications.
We are still waiting for stable FTP client, for instance. Internet
Explorer and Netscape 6 for OSX are buggy and unstable. We have
Key Access, Office X and Freehand and currently testing them. Photoshop
7 should be out in a month but there is no word on EndNote yet.
We have also tested Final Cut Pro for OSX and it's working well.
For now, OS 9.x is the only MacOS supported in the Institute.
The recently released 10.1.1 update fixes several bugs, Oxford911
FW bridge related rpoblem is one of them, and adds some speed as
reported by some users. MS Office for OSX has been also released
and it looks good. However, OSX is still unsupported until further
notice.
Version 10.1 of OSX has been out for a while. It's a big improvement:
it's a lot faster, supports CD burning, DVD playback is very smooth,
lots of bugs were squashed and missing features restored. However,
we still do not support it and ask that you do not install it on
Skirball computers. If you do have a specific need to run OSX, such
as some specific scientific software, you can set up a separate
machine for it, but we must know about it and have your root password
and you must not run any servers! Plus, as of now we will not support
it! You will be on your own if it breaks or you loose anything.
OSX still needs a lot of polishing before it becomes ready for everyday
use.
MS Word for OSX Test Drive is out. Still, there are very few useable
OSX native software titles. Most of the programs we use at Skirball
will not be out for OSX until some time next year. Until we can
fully integrate OSX into our infrastructure, OS 9.x will remain
the only support Mac OS in Skirball.
During Macworld Expo in NYC Apple announced a major OS X update:
version 10.1. It is supposed to address most, if not all, of the
issues. We're looking forward to it!
Mac OS X is being released today.
We have been ask few people if it's OK to install OS X on computers
in the Institute.
The answer is "NO".
Not yet. Please do not install OS X on Macs in the Skirball Institute.
It is a whole new and quite different operating system. The initial
version will lack many essential features and support for/from third
party hardware and software. Not to mention it will be probably
buggy as well
Until all of our software is released in OS X compatible versions
and until we work out any issues (there will be many!) we will only
support Mac OS 9.x until further notice.
I know some of you would love to experiment with OS X but please
refrain from doing so for the time being. OS X is based on UNIX
and if used improperly it may cause network problems and may even
become a security issue.
Please be patient. We'll keep you updated on OS X situation :) We're
testing it and so far it looks like OS X is not ready for deployment
at this time.
Keep checking this page for updates.
So far it seems to be quite stable, but as we expected many features
are missing and third party software/hardware support is minimal
now with most programs being in preview or beta stage and most drivers
not available yet in any form. Interface is sluggish due to immature
video drivers and lack of optimization. Plus, there are many little
but very annoying bugs and oversights. OS 10.1 (or 10.01) update
is supposed to come out soon and address some of these issues. So
far it's impossible to tell when OS X will be ready for deployment.
Most likely this is not going to happen before the end of the year
when Office for OS X and Adobe software are released.
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