From: Milton Aupperle <milton@outcastsoft.com>

Date: August 7, 2012 9:52:19 AM MDT

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] Macs and Science

Hi Jeff;

I knew about the X11 - but I didn't know they killed off XGrid. But what Twit(ter) / FaceBook addict needs XGrid when they are broadcasting to the world that they ate 2 pork chops for supper last night. That's so much more important you received that notice than doing important research.

I watched the Curiosity NASA Live feed on my XBox 360 (Microsoft had an app for that)  Sunday night and noticed that many people had Macs sitting in front of them. But after watching a while, they only used them for scheduling, check lists or notes etc. They didn't use them for control or access to Curiosity - just sitting there partially open. Tim would know the answer to that if Nasa actually does use Macs for real science or not.

I am officially putting the potential shutdown on the Astro IIDC web site  today. The "100 new user line in the sand" is drawn, so on September 15th if it isn't met Astro IIDC is done.

Milton Aupperle

On 7-Aug-12, at 8:50 AM, Jeff wrote:

Hi All,

While I think that Milton's statement that most Mac user's do not do science is correct, there are a significant number that do. You can see the image posted from the Curiosity landing at MacDailyNews, for example.

That said Apple is doing their best to kill off the Scientific market. In the recent past, Apple killed off the XServe which was a nice scientific machine. Mountain Lion killed off X11 and XGrid, two very important things for the scientific community. They have recently announced that they will not even open source XGrid. At least, X11 has an open source equivalent.

I run nearly all of my instruments using Macs, even though that has been a very difficult option for me at times. My two most recent instruments though are controlled by a linux box and a windows machine. I could not justify the effort and expense for machines that will just sit there most of the day. With XGrid, we could utilize the time when the machines were unused for distributed calculations. Without this, the machines are expensive paperweights most of the time.

I use Astro IIDC on a couple of my lab Macs for Camera control and I can tell you that I do this because Astro IIDC is far better than the junk out there on other platforms. I will be pulsing Milton about options for getting me through the next 5 years or so, if he decides to shut down.

It is sad to see Apple killing the science market as it was one of the early adopters that propelled the initial growth of OS X. I love my iPhone and iPod but some of still need a desktop OS.

Jeff