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Scientists Switch to Mac OS X
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.'"
If you think about it, Macs running MacOS X are really pretty close to ideal scientific platforms for most users in the category. Despite all the (mostly justified) bashing Apple gets for a host of other reasons, a Mac rocks for scientific computing for the following reasons (among others, but these jump out first):
1: MacOS X is Unix. Yeah, so is Linux, but Apple has put the prettiest, easiest to use face on a desktop Unix to date, period. I know and use both KDE and GNOME, and as good as they are, they don't compare in the usability area at all to Aqua.
2: The G4, though it can't keep up on raw clock speed with Intel, is in it's element when we're talking about a lot of the operations needed by people doing scientific number crunching. Write your code to be Altivec-aware (like Apple did when they ported BLAST), and it'll haul butt.
3: Apple provides nice development tools, Cocoa is a blast once people make the adjustment, AppleScript Studio is a really nice way to do GUI programming, and you can still use all the classic development tools. You can build apps for good old standard Unix, MacOS Classic, Carbon, Cocoa, or Java, and they'll all pretty much just work. And all the tools you need are either included or a free download away.
4: The PowerBook G4. It's pricey, and it's "only" 800 MHz, but it's about as nice as you can get for a portable Unix workstation. I haven't seen a comparable Intel laptop with battery life even close to what I get on my TiBook 667.
Granted, Apple's not playing in the 64-bit space (yet), but in the 32-bit world I'd have to say they're the desktop Unix of choice for most users, especially technical/scientific users.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Linux just isn't in the same league as OS X. I installed Debian/Woody on my Duron earlier this week, and thus got a glimpse of the latest KDE and GNOME desktops. While not awful by any means, they still don't feel like a solid desktop environment. (Whatever that means.) OS X /does/, and it's beautiful, and it's Unix underneath.
I use Linux with Windowmaker, Mozilla, XEmacs, and an xterm, because those are all I need and it works great. However, if I weren't a geek hacker, and didn't have an unnatural attachment to the IA32 line, I'd use MacOS X.
I've been bashing Apple for years, but it's always been about their operating system. They've not only "fixed" it, but I'd say they now have the best all-round OS out there.
#19845
Matlab has been out for OS X for awhile now. Latest version is 6.5, same as all other platforms. Spec page here.
Two quick answers:
One: Mac OS X is the only UNIX that has Microsoft Office available to it, period. If you want to be a hermit and be unable to send your scientific reports to PC users since you have inappropriate software, then Linux is for you.
Two: Mac OS X may not be the sleekest girl on the block, but her OS underpinnings have been around as long, if not longer, than Linux. Under those "glassy effects" (which are optimized for speed in the 10.2 update) is a CLI and OS kernel that soars.
Nothing is useless in OS X. These scientists just believe that using your OS is more productive than having to play with the damn thing each time someone in the Linux dev group sneezes and makes Yet Another Attempt At a Stable Kernel.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
As cool as the SGI FUEL system looks on paper, and as cool as the case looks in person, it provides poor value.
We've successfully ported our high end graphics/ video application from the SGI platform to Linux running on a high end dual-xeon workstation.
The Linux/Intel performance is more than double that of the fuel system, and our apps push the system to its limits. And, even figuring in the cost of the high end video boards, the Linux/Intel solution is 1/4 of the FUEL price.
It's very easy to justify the porting cost.