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Yosemite upgrade may be an uphill battle for some

By Matt Hartshorn, For The Miami Student

Miami University's Mac users have been experiencing some issues after upgrading to OS X Yosemite, the most recent operating system for Apple's line of Mac computers.

Yosemite was released to the public Oct. 16, but before the release, Miami's IT department received a beta to test.

"We tested the beta before the release, and we didn't find issues," Assistant Vice President of Enterprise Operations Troy Travis said.

However, about two weeks after Yosemite was released to the public, issues began to arise for students on campus.

"In early November, we began hearing some rumblings of problems … like disconnects and slow Internet access," Travis said.

The IT department had relatively few complaints on the issue but decided to uncover what issues existed, if any.

"We took it upon ourselves to investigate and perform due diligence," Assistant Vice President of End-User Services Annie Pagura said.

What they uncovered were sporadic connectivity issues for Macs running Yosemite.

Sophomore Eric Aumiller was one of the students experiencing these problems.

"I updated to it a few days after it came out," Aumiller said, "and the problems started a day or two after that and have been persistent in the past two weeks."

His main issue was with Wi-Fi connectivity, which dropped frequently. Aumiller also said his Mac has been operating slower than normal, only adding to his frustration with Yosemite.

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After discovering the problems with the new software, Miami's IT department looked to worldwide outlets to discover the scope of the issue. In the past year, they had installed 550 new wireless access points across campus. The problem, though, was not with something at Miami, but with Yosemite itself.

"It was a global issue," Pagura said.

To alert students of the issue, the IT department released a statement across campus in the second week of November, cautioning Mac users to bypass the upgrade to Yosemite.

Meanwhile, Apple was busy fixing the problem, and on Nov. 17, they released a patch to fix the issue with Yosemite.

All tests from the IT department indicate that it does fix the problem, and several students have since contacted IT Services to confirm the newest release has fixed the issue.

"We got a pre-release of the fix and checked it out," Travis said. "It looked good to us."

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