Introduction

Topics

MacOS 10.2 (Jaguar)

MacOS 10.3 (Panther)

Security Issues

About these pages

These pages serve two purposes. Firstly, they act as supporting documentation to attendees of the EUCS course "Introduction to Macintosh, OSX" course. Secondly they are intended as a general resource for users of MacOSX within Edinburgh University. As such they are heavily geared towards the problems that OSX users - particularly those used to working with earlier versions of the Macintosh operating system - may face when working within the University.

Other Sources of Information

EUCS maintains two other sources of information for Mac users in the University. The mactips weblog will be updated regularly with Mac related tips and tricks that users may find useful but which might make the online documentation too cluttered.

Secondly, there's an email mailing list (ed-mac) intended for Mac users at the University. Anyone can join the list by sending an email with the body "subscribe ed-mac" (without the quotes) to majordomo@lists.ed.ac.uk.

Security Issues

A page dealing with current OSX related security issues can be found at http://www.ucs.ed.ac.uk/usd/cts/ol/os/mac_osx/security_issues.html

Versions of OSX

There are two versions of MacOSX in common use within the University.

MacOSX 10.2: Known by its product code name of Jaguar, this version of OSX was introduced in August 2002.

MacOSX 10.3: Known by its product code name of Panther, this version was introduced in October 2003. Any Mac purchased since that date should be running this version of OSX.

While anyone familiar with OSX would be able to use either version, there are a number of changes in version 10.3 that make it necessary to maintain two sets of web pages - one each for Panther (10.3) and Jaguar (10.2).

How to check which version of OSX your mac is running

To check whether your Mac is running Jaguar (10.2) or Panther (10.3):

• Choose About This Mac from the Apple menu

A small window, similar to the one shown below, will open on screen.

The version number will be displayed on the second line of text. If the version number begins with 10.2, click here. If it begins with 10.3, click here.