Leopard-related .Mac enhancements made, Mac OS X 10.3.9 support degraded

In preparation for Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)'s ability sync Dashboard widget preferences, Dock items, application and system preferences, and Mail notes across Leopard-based Macs, Apple has (as of October 19th) made some back-end enhancements to the .Mac sync infrastructure. Along with the changes, Apple is upping the OS version requirements for Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4.x) users and degrading some functionality for Panther (Mac OS X 10.3.x) users.

Apple says "to ensure (.Mac) uninterrupted service," users should be running Mac OS X 10.4.10 or later. If you are running a previous version of Mac OS X 10.4.x (Tiger), you may receive the message ".Mac Sync Client is out of date."

If you are still running Mac OS X 10.3.9, you will no longer be able to sync calendars between a Mac OS X 10.3.x-based Mac and a Mac OS X 10.4.x-based Mac. Syncing calendars between two Mac OS X 10.3.x-based Macs will still be possible.

Some MacFixIt readers were less than pleased with the sudden support change. Ed Beshore writes:

"I have to strenuously object to the short notification you provide regarding the use of .Mac Sync services. My wife is running 10.4.8 because of a previous problem with the 10.4.10 upgrade. While it is likely we could sort this out, we simply chose to defer upgrades until Leopard was released.

"Now we get a message at the 11th hour telling us that certain services won't work tomorrow if we aren't upgraded. We have a policy of doing full backups before upgrades because of previous problems with dot releases of OS X. Now - in our case - we will be able to handle this, perhaps Saturday, and my wife will have to do without Sync services for a day or so. But suppose she was traveling and couldn't safely do the upgrade? Suppose she needed those services in the interim?"

Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.

Resources