I want to know Mac specific scientific software
By ajaygrover at Tue, May 8 2007 6:18am |
Hi guys,
I have to convince my IT department to purchase me a mac for my office but they said they will do it only if I really need it for my work. So my question is , is there any scientific software that runs specifically on a mac or better on a mac. Any help will be great.
Thanks
Apple's page
Apple maintains a catalog on scientific software here. The notable ones include software that have won Apple Design awards like EnzymeX.
Science Software
Any particular discipline? Molecular Biology, particle physics...
UNIX + Productivity Software
In addition to the above comment (there's some great Mac-only science software), I like to point out the advantages over UNIX or Windows machines.
I use a lot of software (computational chemistry) which was originally designed for UNIX systems. So I can run all of that cleanly on the Mac -- including easy GUI interfaces for command-line programs. I can also run lots of great "productivity software" like Word, Excel, EndNote, Photoshop, which people might use on a Windows PC. Some of my colleagues actually have two machines on their desks -- Windows and Linux!
But there's also some great Mac-only creative and productivity software which isn't strictly scientific:
* Keynote -- I'll never use PowerPoint again, it's my secret weapon in science seminars
* LaTeXiT -- generate great PDF equations
* Apple's "Grapher" -- easy to generate beautiful equation plots, including 2D, 3D, animations...
* Spotlight -- not really a program, but I like Spotlight for easily organizing science data
* Aabel -- great program for data analysis and publication-quality graphics.
There's also a huge amount of general software for Mac listed on Apple's downloads list and sites like MacUpdate, VersionTracker, and IUseThis.
And don't forget that with Parallels and VMWare and other software, you can basically run a Windows box, a Linux box, and more -- all on one Mac.
Apple Design Awards
Apple also gives out awards at WWDC for the best Mac software, including science-related apps. I can't find a list on Apple's site, but there's a list at Wikipedia.
Unix Apps
"And don't forget that with Parallels and VMWare and other software, you can basically run a Windows box, a Linux box, and more -- all on one Mac."
For me this is the killer app, the ability to run UNIX applications alongside productivity apps gives a MacOSX machine a fantastic edge.
Thank you
Thanks a lot ghutchis, drc, cgavini. You gave me lot of points. Now, I hope I can really convince my IT dept. to buy me a mac instead of a dell.
Bless you all.
Palaeoecological packages
Hi, I would like to find out if anyone knows about some inexpensive software for palaeoecological analysis, e.g. pollen analysis, macrofossils. Software I have to use now is Tilia, an old DOS package, cost: $ 250. And it is desperately utdated and un-user friendly.
Yours,
Count Pollen
Unix in Mac - Fink
I am a fan/user of Fink (http://www.finkproject.org/index.php). It mantains a packages database where you can search/browser for specific applications.
Cocoa and Objective-C 2.0
I like using Xcode 3.0 and Interface Builder so I can write code and design GUIs to do things that aren't commercially available for myself and others. I'm not chained to Visual Studio/.NET Framework. Java has always been an option, but building GUIs has never been easy for me in Java. Even if my app doesn't have a GUI, I enjoy the speed of the code. It's the simplicity and stablity of the whole environment I like.
perhaps the wrong question...
Another question that you may want to ask is which scientific software applications work independent of the Operating System. The one that I certainly am most familiar with is Mathematica, and the user experience with it is the same independent of the OS. The document (aka "Notebooks") are cross-platform. I would say that actually the experience is better in the Mac OS, but that is just my bias, though many certainly share that bias.
But another thing to note is that applications authored in Mathematica on one OS generally work equally in the other supported OS's (Windows, Linux, Unix, ...). The application that I wrote (linked to below my signature below) is in excess of 50,000 lines of Mathematica code (which would easily translate to 10 times that in C++), written on a Mac and, with just a handful of If statements for particular differences in file naming conventions, it works fine on Windows.
So the point here is that, using a Mac does not create any impediments to doing your work--and sharing it--whatsoever. Of course your IT person is asking the wrong questions and making the wrong techno-centric demands. The key question is what tools will help you create your science in the best possible way.
David Reiss
http://Scientificarts.com/worklife
SAGE: Open Source Mathematics Software
I just learned this open source math program, http://sagemath.org/, and I thought some of you might be interested. I haven't installed and used it with it yet (just reading the documents posted in their page).
bulent
Maybe get a quad machine. Or
Maybe get a quad machine. Or run server software
Count Pollen: Tillia replacement
You can try psimpoll, it runs on Mac and can do palyonological richness and stuff like that.
And it's free to use! It's commandline only but not too hard to use if once manage to get data in. The author is very helpfull!
http://www.chrono.qub.ac.uk/psimpoll/psimpoll.html
SEO Quake
Deleted...
DevonThink and Papers
For cross-discipline databases and reference applications I'd definitely add DevonThink and Papers. They are essential parts of my workflow.
You can also add AppleScript or Automator and I second previous comments about *nix.
Then, it all depends on your field of research. If you are in the field of Earth Sciences, I can point you towards more specific applications.
Nico
www.volcanoloco.org
www.gns.cri.nz
psimpoll
Duplicate!
Just let your IT-guys try to
Just let your IT-guys try to connect a projector with a different resolution to a Mac and compare it to when you are fighting with Windows to get it to work. They'll buy you the mac in a flash ;D
Otherwise, you can show that the mac is more ready for scientific work "out of the box", which should ease their work (python, perl etc. is already installed).
Actually, that Keynote is Mac only is a big thing as well. Presentations are a large portion of a scientists work (you have to be able to present your results, otherwise no-one will know you have done them).
The workflow with Quicksilver, applescript, automator is so much smoother than on a Windows computer. These are the things that I really miss when using the computers at my work. I'd really want a smooth way to create applescripts to parse information from textfiles that I put in a folder and convert that to a tab separated file for matlab. That is so much more time consuming in windows.
Also, .pdf-printing is easier in OSX. Less hassle with software should be a good thing for the IT-department.
// David Lindegren