MATLAB won't run on Intel Macs and affects Neurodata Researchers
On July 5, MathWorks, the company behind MATLAB, responded to a support question and announced its current status on the Intel-based MacOSX development. MathWorks' announcement quite plainly says that the anticipated Fall 2006 release will not contain support for Intel-based Mac hardware, and that while they intend to continue to support MacOSX, they have no estimate of when they will finish the Intel conversion of MATLAB.
WHAT THIS MEANS TO NEURODATA RESEARCHERS: If you buy or receive new Intel-based Apple hardware, it will NOT be able to run MATLAB in the next 3 to 6 months AT A MINIMUM. This is a BIG DEAL if you are doing Neurodata processing and have specialized toolkits (like SPM) that require MATLAB.
WHAT WE'LL BE DOING: IT staff from the University of Michigan will be gathering contacts at MathWorks and Apple Developer Support to bring them together to expedite the Intel port of MATLAB. This strategy worked very well last year to fix the severe performance problems in Maple on MacOSX. We will try to meet with representatives from both organizations at the Apple WorldWide Developer's Conference in early August, along with other attendees that are concerned.
WHAT WE NEED FROM YOU: We need to approach Apple and MathWorks with impact numbers. Specifically, the number of users of MATLAB your organization has, and, if MATLAB isn't available on Intel Mac hardware, how many machines your organization WON'T be buying over the next 6 months. If you have a feeling of how this will affect your longer-term IT plans, that's useful impact information as well. Finally, report back if its possible for your organization to use an alternative to MATLAB and drop MATLAB altogether (see below). If there is impact info I've overlooked, of course include that in your response.
(Update:) Apple Developer Relations is currently working closely with MathWorks to bring MATLAB to Intel-based Macs. We're encouraged to contact MathWorks individually at
ALTERNATIVES TO MATLAB: Maple and Mathematica are two alternative programs, but some research requires Matlab's functionality because toolkits like SPM have been built on its architecture. That means it will require complete recoding of work you're doing to support other applications. These choices are really only viable if you're willing to make a long-term commitment away from MATLAB.
The other alternatives are the 2 free "clones" of MATLAB, Octave and SciLab, that may be acceptable substitutes in this interim period, but I am not aware of any testing being done on SPM against these other applications. Both are mature pieces of software (over 5 years old). Octave is mainly text based, but has GNUplot capability and more closely approximates MATLAB syntax. SciLab is has an X11 GUI and some very nice graphical features. Neither are 100% clones, so there WILL be some conversion glitches. Here's a link for more information on these two packages:
Thanks so much for your time and input,
Gretchen Kopmanis
University of Michigan
Psychology-LS&A
Bad News
As someone who uses SPM and Matlab everyday this is a big blow. I know that you can always use Boot Camp and run the Windows version of Matlab, but that is definitely not an ideal solution. Has anyone gotten Matlab to run under the Parallels virtual machine?
Re: Bad News (MATLAB won't run on Intel Macs natively....)
There is a post here:
http://www.macresearch.org/linux_on_macbook_pro_for_matlab#comment-3224
Mentioning that it does work. So that might be an option (although not ideal) in the meantime.
Dave
SciPy as an alternative
Or .. as a (more permanent) alternative to matlab, you can consider SciPy
It would probably be just as much of a pain to convert your existing code to that, but hey .. it's free ... [insert how important it is to keep your research tools open and available here] ... supports intel now.
There is also a Topical Software section which reference a tool/library for computational neuroscience as well (PyDDSTool), which might be worth looking into.
Enjoy,
-steve
Just Plain Wrong
Do your research.
I use MATLAB every single day on my intel mac. It runs under Rosetta. Is it fast? It is faster (by using the matlab 'bench' command) than my ibook G4; however, just barely. So, to say it does not work is false. I will say that this delay along with a multitude of bugs on other platforms is pushing me towards replacing matlab with scipy and freeing myself of its shackles; however, the inertia is tough to overcome.
Would matlab be better with a native port? Of course, but do not say that you "...will NOT be able to run MATLAB in the next 3 to 6 months..." when people are using it daily.
matlab + parallels
I ran Matlab on my PowerBook 12"/15" and now Macbook 2.0G.
I found matlab under Rosetta to be on par with my PowerBook speed; however, beware there is no Java. But plotting graphics (even simple ones) still slow on x11.
I run Matlab on Rosetta now and it's been great. Graphics smooth, much faster than under Rosetta and it's not a huge impediment to my workflow.
Downside with Parallels is that USB support is paltry. So when I use DAQ toolbox with various USB data capture devices i have to bootup with bootcamp. Note, this was not even an option for the Powerbooks, as the DAQ toolbox is not OS X compatible.
Running Matlab on MacBook
Would you mind sharing what version of Matlab you're using? I just went to the website for the software and it says it won't run "native" on Intel-based MacBooks, so your note was very encouraging. I want to purchase a MacBook for my daughter who's starting college but she needs to run Matlab software. Can she successfully use the "student version" of Matlab?
Matlab on Intel
I am using Matlab R14SP2 (version 7.1.0.183) on a MacBook Pro. The mathworks site is correct that it won't run "native." It runs under the Rosetta PowerPC emulation (transparent to the user).
When I received my MacBook Pro, I stuck the install cd in and ran the installer without a problem. Matlab runs fine and even uses my previously compiled PPC mex files (probably wouldn't work with intel mex files).
CAVEAT: One thing I just realized is that many people are probably used to using the atrocious matlab java interface. I don't believe that it runs on the intel mac. I have always used matlab from the terminal, and it works flawlessly.
% /Applications/MATLAB71/bin/matlab -nojvm
Hope that helps.
Best display type for Matlab on MacBook
Thanks very much for your reply on successfully using the software on Intel-based MacBooks. I was wondering also if you knew whether the graphics capability with MATLAB will be good enough on the MacBook, or do we need to pay the extra hundreds of $ for the MacBook Pro?
Je souhaite avoir matlab sur
Je souhaite avoir matlab sur mon macbook
Additional comment on "MATLAB won't run"
I received a phone message today from a representative (sales, I think) from Mathworks who told me that "MATLAB won't run" on an Intel Mac -- so the company itself is giving out wrong information! I decided to call Tech Support at Mathworks (to ask a related question) and was of course assured that it will run, just not natively. However, he also told me that by early fall there may be a beta-version of native software for Intel Macs available.
So perhaps the person who wrote that first post received the same misinformation from the company.
Patience
MATLAB will be ready when it is ready; there is enough Right Attention on it. Patience is hard.
Snippets taken from "patience" on wikipedia.org:
"This article is about the state of being.
"Patience is the ability to endure waiting, delay, or provocation without becoming annoyed or upset, or to persevere calmly when faced with difficulties.
"Patience is described as a virtue in religion or spiritual practices."
what?
what?
He would like to have Matlab
He would like to have Matlab on his MacBook. French, I rest my case :s
Look for MATLAB to SciPy or Python converter
I have a vague feeling that I read something about a MATLAB to Python or MATLAB to SciPy converter. (scipy is a numerical plug-in for Python.)
Also FYI, there is a MATLAB-like plotting package for Python--it uses the syntax of MATLAB plot commands. matplotlib ???
So can you do data aqucisition on macintel under windows?
I would like to have an intel based mac on my rig so I can switch between DAQ with matlab under windows and other mac based programs (Axograph).
Does anyone tried to do DAQ with matlab on the new macs under windoze (using bootcamp). Can you give some details on the configurations:
1. What mac
2. What software for DAQ
3. Using PCI or USB
4. What board (NI, Instrutec, microstar)?
Many thanks
Mickey
yes it works with bootcamp
Mickey,
I have used DAQ toolbox under Matlab 7.1 sp3 running on Macbook and Mac Mini (intel) under Bootcamp and both times it worked fine.
I used the daq toolbox to talk to the MCC 1208FS (USB) card and everything, so far, works like normal. Furthermore, I tested a compiled version (with the matlab compiler) and deployed on a Mac Mini, and again, it worked.
Since then, I have advised my department to get the Mac Minis as they are small, fast, flexible, quiet and cheap. BTW, the Mac Mini is a Dual Core with 512M RAM.
quote: Matlab runs fine and
quote:
Matlab runs fine and even uses my previously compiled PPC mex files (probably wouldn't work with intel mex files).
How about compiling new mex file? Does the command line
>>mex myfunction.c
still work?
Yes, it does. It still is a
Yes, it does. It still is a PPC mex file though, so will run slow as it makes use of Rosetta.
Has anybody experience with compiling SPM5 for intel mac
The beta version of matlab for intel macs has been out for quite a while now, and the 665 version of SPM5 includes updated spm_platform.m and a new Makefile.
I have tried to run the new Makefile, and some part of SPM actually works including some of the mexmaci functions e.g. spm_resels_vol.mexmaci. However most of the mexed files causes crash e.g. spm_hist.mexmaci during segmentation and mat2file.mexmaci during the "DICOM import".
Has anybody out there successfully compiled all c functions necessary for running SPM5?
matlab + parallels
I recently installed WinXP and then Matlab R2006b under Parallels. Everything looked great... until I executed an experiment on my Wintel box at work and my Macbook Pro and compared the results. They are slightly different. And with a magnitude of difference that is not down in the noise. I'm just beginning to dig into this and was curious if anyone else may have seen such behavior.
Chris
Matlab in parallels
I have been using Matlab for a couple of months now on parallels and everything seems to be running reasonably well. Most of what I have been using is Simulink and the Image Processing Blockset and the results I've been getting are (I think) accurate. I also got a free student version of matlab for Mac Intels to test it and I have to say it was horrible, slow, the interface was lame and I just did not like it.
Hope this helps
Mariano
Changing math software
I hope a few of the readership might begin using LabMathX. We made it a Universal Binary and while it is too young to compete with MatLab, LabMathX accepts plug-ins and is thus infinitely expandable. It is easy to use too. At $69 it is inexpensive to try and even if there are very few people willing to use ObjC to write plug-ins, we'll be adding free ones ourselves. We intend to keep LabMathX going regardless of changes by Apple to either hardware or OS X. And thanks to those of you who are already using LabMathX!
Cheers,
Thomas L. Ferrell
Physics Dept.
University of Tennessee
This is really probably one
This is really probably one of the most ridiculous comments I've ever read. It's like saying, "Oh, I just realized that most of you are probably using the atrocious Aqua interface instead of running your mac in a text console mode." Of course most people run Matlab via the interface. This after starting your initial post with an elitist statement like "Do your research." It's entirely possible that the OP went to the official Mathworks site which says pretty much what was posted here.
All you need is at your fingertips
Hi,
Sometimes I can't help but wonder why people are so attached to a particular OS. The Intel Macs also have the possibility of running both Linux and Windows natively so I don't see the point of all this panic. For me the OS is just a means to an end and if I have to install another OS which makes my software run faster then I just do it. We just need the results!