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Scientists Switch to Mac OS X

Posted by pudge on from the i-try-to-get-out-and-they-pull-me-back-in dept.

Adam Q Salter writes "A Boston Globe article quotes many scientists and engineers who have switched to Apple workstations or have immediate plans to do so. Craig Hunter, an aerospace engineer at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia, said 'OS X, I think, is the best Unix I've seen come along, ever.' Scott Sneddon, a senior scientific fellow at Genzyme, is quoted as saying 'OS X is a better Unix development environment than Linux or Silicon Graphics Irix.'"

2 of 132 comments (clear)

  1. Re:who are they to compare OS/X to linux? by Melantha_Bacchae · · Score: 3, Funny

    displague wrote:

    > Some secretary probably wanted a new Mac. When
    > it arrived the guys wanted to check under the
    > hood. They found that it is 3 million years
    > ahead of their SGI boxes and decided to start
    > switching/porting.
    >
    > I seriously doubt that they got into doing this
    > with Linux... My guess is that they installed
    > Redhat 5.0 a few years ago, and then maybe tried
    > 6.2 on an underused partition, eventually
    > scraping it when their uncompressed images
    > needed more space... They probably never really
    > investigated Linux as an alternative.

    Sorry, but your fantasy doesn't jive with the article.

    Scott Sneddon said he had been using Mac for years. He was using Mac, Linux, and SGI at the same time for different tasks. Then along came OS X, and he said "good-bye" to his Linux and SGI boxes, and freed up much disk space. He also said that "OS X is a better Unix development environment than Linux or Silicon Graphics Irix". Having done development under all three platforms (though SGI was ten years ago), I must agree. Cocoa is really sweet.

    Craig Hunter, from NASA, replaced his SGIs with Macs running OS X.

    Gaurav Khanna also replaced his SGIs with Macs running OS X.

    Rob Meyer's company used to produce software for the Mac, and now they are back. Rob Meyer himself is a long time Windows user, and thinking of buying himself a Mac.

    > Wait! I do have a point - I assume that they
    > have not really given Linux a try, and should
    > not compare it to OS/X for that reason....

    Nope, you are point free. Next time, try actually reading the article before you post a comment.

    "Godzilla and Jaguar: Punch! Punch! Punch! Hit! Hit! Hit!
    We die if they stop fighting for us."
    Jet Jaguar Song, "Godzilla vs. Megalon"

  2. Re:About time. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    This is too a troll! I won't stand for this windows bashing on slashdot!