From: "Douglas" <dwd3m@virginia.edu>

Date: August 7, 2012 12:35:51 PM MDT

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: Macs and Science

I'm a little late to this discussion but as a scientist with a lab full of Macs I figure I should at least say something about this.  It hasn't always been easy, but we have managed to stick with Macs for most of our microscope imaging during the past 25 years or so.  It is still our platform of choice for running high-end image acquisition and analysis software like Volocity. NIH Image J started as a Mac program (now Java based) and we still use this extensively, as do a lot of other labs.   But, for two of our imaging rigs including a confocal microscope, we still have to use proprietary Zeiss and Nikon PC-based software for acquisition.  Most of the people in the lab use MacBooks for their writing, figure preparation, data analysis, etc. and there are some great literature management software packages such as "Papers" that was written for scientists by scientists. When I go to meetings, I'd say easily more than half of the presenters are running Macs but these are biologists and the situation appears to depend a lot on the field (e.g., bioengineers prefer PCs it seems).

So, from my perspective Macs are a widely used - and even a growing platform among biomedical scientists, at least for the past several years.  That said, there are some troubling signs.  As Jeff mentioned, it is dismaying that Apple dropped the XServe - and not too long after we set-up our own system to manage imaging data coming off of all the rigs!  They still seem to be committed for now to supporting OS X server software (I hope) because we are likely looking at replacing our XServe-RAID system with a MacMini and thunderbolt RAID in the not so distant future (at least price of admission is a lot cheaper than XServe).  The obvious on iOS, the dominance of the iPad/iPod/iPhone market, and consumption of entertainment content doesn't bode well for the computer side of the business - then again, the move to cloud-based computing indicates even more titanic changes are on the way for all of us who use our computers for work and play.

At this point, I'm just happy that Apple finally released the Thunderbolt to FW 800 adapter so I can now use my Flea2 and Astro II DC again with my MacAir.  I got it yesterday and confirmed it works!!

In any event - also just learned from Milton about his plan to drop support for Astro II DC.  As many of you have already pointed out, this would be a real loss to us Mac astronomers. I'm hoping we can drum up enough support (and new customers) to keep it going. I think it is a great program.

Doug

--- In Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com, "Jeff" <terryj@...> 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