Author Archives: Cynthia Slater, James Carroll, Mack Roark and Nathan Burt

Important Info about Apple’s Latest OS Offerings

Apple recently released a new iOS version for use on iPads and iPhones, iOS 11. You may experience difficulty connecting to Middlebury College email hosted by Microsoft when using the native iOS Mail and Calendar Apps. ITS recommends you use Outlook for iOS available free in the App Store. Apple and Microsoft are working on a solution.  UPDATE: this issue was resolved with iOS 11.0.1.

Apple also announced the next version of macOS, High Sierra, available 9/25/17. ITS has instituted a block on the installation of this OS on college managed computers until it can be tested with college systems and software. Our High Sierra webpage (http://go.middlebury.edu/highsierra) will provide updates as they become available, including notes about any known issues and resolutions.

New Mac OS 10.10 (“Yosemite”) Released

Mac OS X Yosemite (10.10.x), released on 16 October 2014 and is available as an upgrade for faculty and staff who are currently running Mavericks (10.9.x).  If your machine is running Mavericks (10.9.x) or Mountain Lion (10.8.x) the upgrade will appear automatically in Software Updates under the Apple Menu.  If your machine is running Snow Leopard (10.6.x) or Lion (10.7.x), you will need to contact the Technology HelpDesk to discuss upgrade options.

As with all operating system upgrades, there are potential issues of compatibility with applications and services and we are currently neither promoting nor discouraging the upgrade.  New computers provided for faculty and staff will continue to have 10.9.5 (Mavericks) installed for now; public labs are not scheduled to be updated to Yosemite at this time.  Knowing that there will be “early adopters” who opt to upgrade right away, we have created a site to share known issues and areas of concern.  Visit go/yosemite/ to view — or add to — this work-in-progress.

Yosemite has several improvements, including better support of multiple monitors, handoff capabilities between Yosemite and iOS8 devices, and enhanced iCloud Drive capabilities.  See Apple’s complete list of what’s new in Yosemite or take a personal tour using lynda.com’s new, hour-long course, Mac OS X Yosemite New Features.

In case you ever wondered what it costs to charge your iPad…

Some have asked, “Is it really cost effective for me to be reading documents on an iPad with a back-lit screen instead of printing them out?”. Based on this article, it is worth literally every penny.

For $1.36 for a year, when charging an iPad every other day, you can read a lot of papers! That amount of money would print 27.2 single sided sheets at the current printing costs on campus. Food for thought, don’t you think?

The study was only done using iPads but it would be safe to assume that the savings are similar with other tablets.