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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. I almost hate to say this, but "duh" by jht · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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."
  2. Matlab for OS X out for awhile by spicyjeff · · Score: 5, Informative

    Matlab has been out for OS X for awhile now. Latest version is 6.5, same as all other platforms. Spec page here.