Apple has announced that Mac users can upgrade to the latest Mac operating system, OS X 10.11 El Capitan, and that El Capitan will be available from the Mac App Store as a free upgrade.  The Division of Information Technology would like to take this opportunity to remind the campus that until we know of any incompatibilities between the El Capitan operating system and various services and applications, DoIT cannot fully support it.

Because the operating system may not be compatible with some software applications, DoIT advises you not to attempt to download and install the free upgrade on any WCU-owned computer.  Prior experience has shown that attempting to upgrade a WCU-owned computer with a personally-owned version of an operating system can cause issues with the standard WCU applications and software.

DoIT will be evaluating WCU core systems and services for compatibility with this new operating system. Once the new operating system has been tested and approved for integration with our enterprise environment, a planned migration of WCU-owned Apple computers will be scheduled.

With any new major or minor release of any operating system, there are always incompatibilities with applications that need to be addressed by the manufacturers and at times can take months to be addressed.  Some users may not be able to upgrade to El Capitan due to hardware limitations, and it can only be installed on any supported Mac running OS X 10.6 or later. 

The full list of supported machines is as follows:

  • iMac (Mid-2007 or later)
  • MacBook (13-inch Aluminum, Late 2008), (13-inch, Early 2009 or later)
  • MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid-2009 or later), (15-inch, Mid/Late 2007 or later), (17-inch, Late 2007 or later)
  • MacBook Air (Late 2008 or later)
  • Mac Mini (Early 2009 or later)
  • Mac Pro (Early 2008 or later)
  • Xserve (Early 2009)

For any questions or concerns regarding the release of El Capitan, please contact the IT Help Desk.

Thank you,

IT Help Desk
help.wcu.edu
227-7487 (local)
866-928-7487 (toll free)
Available weekdays 7:30 a.m.-6:30 p.m. ET

As a reminder, IT will never ask you to confirm account information, such as username and password, through email.