BWJones's Journal: Scientists choose Macs

This story running on E-Commerce Times discusses some notable examples of scientists who are switching to Macs as opposed to Windows, or other *nix operating systems. Individuals highlighted include Matt Golumbeck (the guy who chose the landing sites for the Mars Rovers), Theodore Gray of Wolfram Research
and a couple of bioscientists and software engineers. I know from my experience in the vision research community, we are starting to pay much more attention to Macs now that OS X has matured. Macs have proved to be a valuable resource that has enabled our work to be accomplished more efficiently and for fewer dollars than previously possible. An added benefit is that some of the free "tools" such as iMovie, iChat, iPhoto and iDVD that come with OS X allow for communication of scientific concepts in a way not easily possible with other OS solutions.

wanna-be

[blinder]

musicians who fancy themselves as recording engineers also like Macs -- but that's been the case for a long time.

I love my mac (currently using 10.2). I had been a long-time Linux-on-the-desktop user -- but that all changed when I bought my PowerBook 17. IMUO (In My Useless Opinion) -- OS X is the finest operating system yet. Its the best of all worlds (I can hack on my shell), run Eclipse and Photoshop all without cursing at Wine or wondering why KDE has locked up again.

Me too

[Ethelred Unraed]

I also used to be very much on the Linux bandwagon (and I still use Linux, but mostly for servers), but also think that OS X is the best all-round OS out there. It's reasonably open, it's standards-compliant, it's stable, it has a slick and clean and consistent GUI (much more so than XP, GNOME or KDE), it runs the desktop software I need (Photoshop, Freehand, Flash, Illustrator, Office, etc.) and server software too (Apache, PHP, MySQL, etc.). And it "just works", which is more than I can say for Linux or X

Re:Me too

[leandrod]

>

OS X is the best all-round OS out there

Except that Apple has given up on OpenStep as a platform, and all its interface is proprietary implementations anyway.

It is just not as conductive to freedom as a GNU system, if more so than a MS one.

Re:wanna-be

[evilviper]

wondering why KDE has locked up again.

Well then why didn't you dump KDE? It's not as if it's the only desktop environment around. I prefer Openbox < v3 because it's so stable (it has NEVER crashed on me), fast, and has no dependencies. Some people prefer the simplicity and speed of XFce, etc.

Personally, I must say I don't understand the Mac converts that much. MacOS has always been for people that don't want to know anything about how a computer works, but that seems to be all it has going for it.

Mac OS X is UNIX, ya know

[Ethelred Unraed]

I certainly consider it a step-up from Windows, but I don't know why Unix people would convert.

Because it is UNIX -- basically a FreeBSD variant. It's all there -- sed, awk, Perl, Apache, curl, bash, tcsh, etc. -- and if it isn't (like PHP or MySQL or Python), just install Fink [sourceforge.net] (a package manager based on apt) and voila, you have a complete GNU installation. X11 is also included, so you can run your X apps as well.

Cheers,

Ethelred

Re:Mac OS X is UNIX, ya know

[evilviper]

For one thing, even if we say it's Unix, why would you use it? It is not free, limited to one (not inexpensive) platform, and a small subset of hardware.

Secondly, a Unix CLI userland does not make it a Unix system. Perhaps Windows would be Unix as well if Microsoft included KSH, sed, awk, perl, apache, etc?

If you don't buy that, it's still not normal Unix just because the GUI is incompatible with X.

Re:Mac OS X is UNIX, ya know

[Ethelred Unraed]

For one thing, even if we say it's Unix, why would you use it?

I believe I explained that in my other post. It has a UI that's miles better than GNOME or KDE (which are still extremely inconsistent and clunky, especially KDE), has all the software I need (both on the UNIXy side -- Apache, PHP, MySQL, etc. -- and the graphics software I need -- Photoshop, Freehand, Illustrator, InDesign, etc.). It's very stable, uses open standards for much of its software, and so on.

It is not free

The FSF would seem to

Ports, too

[Ethelred Unraed]

Oh, and if you're more of a ports kinda guy, it's also available for OS X and Darwin [opendarwin.org].

Cheers,

Ethelred

Re:wanna-be

[shepd]

You want something that won't crash?

Use VTWM.

Re:wanna-be

[blinder]

well, there is the whole "musician" thing I mentioned. And Linux aint gonna run Pro Tools... and there aint nuthin in the OSS world that can even dream of touching Pro Tools.

Linux for audio, well, right now, it is completely and totally inferior to Macs and OS X. Oh sure Ardour has some potential, but honestly. They will probably never catch up to PT.