El Capitan 2016-17 School Year

[moojomoore]

Just wondering what everyone else is doing for their images for student computers next year? Are you sticking with Yosemite or are you going to El Capitan?

We are looking to move to El Capitan and just want to know what kind of issues we are going to run into with student computers, MacBook Airs in a 1:1 Program.

[ttyler1999]

I am a firm believer in "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." You should seriously and rigorously compare the pros and cons of updating. For us, the cons of having to test all of our deployed images, software, printer drivers, etc. do not outweigh the pros of the few new features that Apple offers with their newer OS's. We usually stick with the initial OS for all 3 years of our lease. I offer users who want to be a tester the option to upgrade if they think they have a need, with the caveat that they will be on their own for up to the minute tech support. I almost never get any takers.

[tim_rees]

Hey,

We upgraded at the start of the year (as thats the start of our school year over here in Aus). We have 1:1 for staff, and lab machines for students.

Honestly, the 1:1 for staff with 10.11 has been pretty much flawless, no new issues that weren't in Yosemite, and quite a number of issues fixed (AirPlay performance is still our biggest issue in both, Mavericks was the last time this worked properly for us). The biggest pro about the upgrade was once the Device Assignment of Mac app store apps became available for us to use. (We were doing a slight dodgy to ensure we didn't need to log in to the App Store on all machines). The biggest issue was re-writing a few little scripts to get around SIP, i.e. our laziness when creating in-house resources, and putting things in the wrong place!!

The Lab machines were a different story, when it came to "network home folders", but that is not something you generally have to worry about with 1:1.

Not sure if you have already considered how you would update to El Cap, but have a look at https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/discussion.html?id=19320 if you haven't already.

[Look]

We are on a school different year in NZ and have been using El Cap since January.
It has been basically problem free with the only exception being SIP and that was really only a big deal on dual boot machines.
There was the odd script here and there where things had changed but nothing major or dificult to resolve.
There were also a few forced software upgrades as a result, but these were also relatively few and easily resolved.

[roiegat]

@ttyler1999 I agree with you on the motto, but the problem we have here is that people buy new equipment which can't be downgraded. So we always have to stay on top of the OS's and make sure we can support any new OS that comes in.

I'd love to be somewhere they give people the same laptop for 3-4 years, so I wouldn't have to worry about OS updates...but living the Mac life means preparing for a new OS every year. Keeps us on our toes.

[Grovetechies]

Hi there,

We run a 1:1 MacBook Air program at a Canadian School; Took the leap to Casper Suite 9.9 in March 2016 (March Break project) and deployed 10.11.4 via Self Service (with prior Installer caching scoped to Smart Groups).
No issues so far; had to upgrade to Java for OS X - required for IBM (Lotus) Notes, so that works fine.
All iMacs running Parallels v10.4 are stable, and we've been able to deploy iMacs running Windows 7 and Windows 10 via Boot Camp.
Best.

[SimonLovett]

Hi. A colleague and myself make the recommendation of when to switch OS X version at our University, generally after a cautious process of application re-packaging, and expert application end-users testing our beta versions.

We currently intend the majority of our student facing Mac estate to be 10.11.5 by October. Currently the majority of our student estate are on 10.10.5.

With staff devices, we no longer support OS X below 10.10.5, driven by an ongoing project to roll out of Office 2016 together with mobile encryption. Currently we are 'Casperising' staff machines to bring them under management and allow an analysis of their inventories, with a view to upgrading them eventually to 10.11.

Regarding El Capitan issues, we had plenty at first, but 11.4 and 11.5 resolved most of those, along with repackaging our apps and making minor adjustments to our scripts. On the whole we are now finding 10.11.5 more fit for our purpose than 10.10.5.

After getting badly burned by problems with 10.10 at the beginning, we are much slower to upgrade now than we used to be - 6 to 12 months AFTER release date seems to fit our academic pattern and allow for the OS version to 'mature' in terms of service packs. We can't wait longer than that though, as our customers expectation is that we will provide the latest, or close to the latest, of all operating systems and applications.

[CCNapier]

We are going El Capitan:

1) "Security"
2) Newer devices coming in will come with El Capitan and can't be downgraded.
3) VPP assignments to computer and not user!

[mconners]

We are updating all of our student labs to El Capitan.

There are some reasons to wait, but I am having issues with new computers coming in that will require El Capitan and thus, I have to get our packages to work with El Capitan one way or another. Additionally, if I am taking the time to update our packages, I might as well get all of the labs updated to the same OS so we don't confuse faculty, students or support staff in wondering what OS is where.

There was a time when I nursed along multiple OS'es on multiple Macs. No longer. Keep it simple works well here.

[lee_smith]

We are moving to:
- El Cap
- Microsoft Office 2016 for Mac
- Updating Print Drivers
- Updating Active Inspire

We have noticed the following:
- El Cap power consumption has decreased battery life
- We did run into an issue with some internet accounts and Gmail ( I cannot recall how we fixed this)
- Adobe CS6 does not run on El Cap
--- we will not be upgrading our HS Lab, HS Yearbook and HS Broadcasting Labs
---- we look into Adobe Creative Cloud next year

Benefits:
- VPP assigned devices and not users
- Just about everyone is on the same OS

I hope this helps!

[cpdecker]

We allow users to upgrade as soon as possible after a new release (with a few months of testing) since we don't have a way to keep our users from updating their iPads off-site. We've had major problems with compatibility between iWork and iLife across iOS and OS X and we just bite the bullet and push everything up when we can. Wish we could plan updates better than that.

[Nix4Life]

Hi guys, just like you all, another summer re-imaging and updating, working around summer school classes
1. everyone is going to El Cap
2. Already began Office 2016 roll out
3. Adobe CC Media labs/Adobe CS6 the rest. @lee.smith did you install java1.6? asking because I have been running Adobe CS6 on El Cap since 10.11.2
4. Will be pushing a "self service like product -(MSC)" to Teachers when they return in August

[lee_smith]

Hey @LSinNY

This summer looks like a busy summer.

I have not installed java 1.6. Once you did, you haven't seen any issues?

[GSquared]

Hey there -

We did an upgrade push this year to deal with some AWDL issues in Yosemite that were resolved in El Capitan with our 1:1 program. So far, the biggest issue that we have come across is SIP. SIP prevents us from doing certain things that we had in place such as restricting Messages by making the binary in the .app not executable.

Other issues: -iWork versions incompatible with some older ones and vise versa.
-Storage Space due to iPhoto Libraries being converted to Photo Libraries (the old one lingers and then they use double the space)
-JAMF binary got relocated on release of El Cap, but that is across the board (update your scripts if you haven't yet for some reason!)

Also, we are even running CS5.5 on El Cap, not sure why CS6 wasn't working for you @lee.smith Definitely give the old Java a try as that is a requirement for it to run for some programs, it should be prompting for it on launch though.