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Apple Businesses Science

MATLAB for Mac OS X Announced 29

Posted by pudge from the mmmmmm-ath dept.
FunkDaddy writes "The MathWorks today announced its intention to make MATLAB, the industry's leading technical computing software, available on Mac OS X, with the next release of the MathWorks product line. With MATLAB on Mac OS X, users will be able to use powerful, sophisticated technical computing tools in a graphical and intuitive environment. You hear that mac-geek-scientist-guys? Rejoice!" It looks like perhaps that survey did some good.
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MATLAB for Mac OS X Announced More

MATLAB for Mac OS X Announced

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  • Now, someone tell me how I can get our IT department to replace about 2,500 Windows workstations with Mac's, along with all the associated software, using a budget that's been down-sized along with everything else in the last year.
  • Will the new Matlab run under Quartz or under XDarwin? I wonder.... And what's with the mention of Java in the press release, will matlab use Java so that it can run even slower still?

    • Re:questions, questions... (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Since version 6.0, Matlab has had the ability to load Java classes and call Java methods (including AWT stuff). I think it also provides hooks to invoke the Matlab engine from Java code, and the Matlab desktop probably uses Java (I wouldn't know, I only use the command-line :).

      If they're going to support Mac OS X, it's probably in their best interest to go fully native instead of X. To do otherwise is to ask for a lot more support headaches.
    • my sources say that matlab for OS X will run under XDarwin and not under aqua... hey, at least this gives us a chance to write something better and brand gnu :) and there's always orboros X to give XDarwin the same look and feel as aqua
  • i am kinda surprised that they didnt port it earlier, after all now that macos is an unix, porting matlab probably didnt require more than recompilation of their existing unix matlab source.

    • Re:why not before? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      that is true for the math libraries, not the user interface. OS X / aqua is not XWindows... but maybe that's where java comes into play?
      it might work, if apple gets the hardware accelerated java / swing under way. it's currently in the developer tools but too buggy to be enabled by default. when it works, though, swing almost runs at native speed. not bad.

      n.
  • I dont know what the rest of you guys think, but i have a love-hate relationship to Matlab. It is unreasonably expensive and it has a whole bunch of flaws (negative indexing anyone?).However, by some ancient twist of fate it has become standard.

    It is possible to lend a copy of matlab from the university i attend for about $6. But the day i'm outtahere it gonna cost me to continue using it.

    Its a bit sad that my university so vigourously require students to learn matlab. I once enterred into a discussion with one of the professors... Afterwards i learned that he had written a bunch of the toolboxes ('system identification' and 'robust control' i think), so that professor were economically motivated to engourage people to start using matlab.

    Still, theres no need complaining about it. Its a decent tool that will surely be welcome for many OS X users.
    • These days, at least half the kids are downloading it, and the other half are asking me... erm, I mean, the kids who know how to download it, if they can have a copy. All sorts of industry-standard programs like Photoshop, Final Draft (for screenwriters), After Effects, Flash, 3d studio max, etc etc., are being downloaded via p2p. the student versions are usually less than $100, but if you could download those pricey textbooks you bet I'd.. erm, I mean, those kinds of students would be downloading them too. Or you could just buy them from a student at half.com, paying 50% of the price to a fellow student selling it, or getting 40% MORE than the college will buy it back for!!!!

      HORRAY FOR THE INTERNET!!!!

    • Have you seen GNU Octave [gnu.org]? It's not as featureful as the absolute latest version of Matlab, but it was more than sufficient for me for my neural networks class. In fact, I used it last night on my final exam.

      If you know Perl (or want to learn), another alternative is the Perl PDL Perl Data Language module. I used that for a semester project, and it worked great.

  • OK, so I was really about to lose hope over this... Mac hardware was really looking like the Right Thing for all of my needs *except* for the fact that there was no Matlab available for OS X. I would have to believe that Apple was made very aware of how killer it would be to have this happen, and that they may have had to toss in some cash to bankroll this on the front end. Does anybody know if this is the way it worked?
  • Who today hath granted me slack.

    Once I get my hands on Matlab OS X, I can finally be rid of my windows machine. I'm not a foaming at the mouth Gates hater, I just simply prefer os x. I have Offive vX, Maple, and soon matlab...now only solidworks... and my plan of world domination will come to fruition! muhahaha *wipes foam from mouth*

  • I know that Octave is not quite Matlab, but it's definitely enough for all the assignments an average student gets. There is a fink (http://fink.sourceforge.net/pdb/package.php/octav e) package. And I believe it's definitely worth a look, instead of stealing Matlab from Gnutella.
    • I know that Octave is not quite Matlab, but it's definitely enough for all the assignments an average student gets.

      Octave is a wonderful piece of software, but there are still many features that it lacks which, alas, tend to be just the ones I find myself needing more often. Weirdly enough, I don't really mind paying for Matlab, either. But I *do* find the #@!$!#@# license manager deal to be a COMPLETE lose. Smart people work there; surely they can come up with a better plan than the one they have. :-(

      • I just bought matlab for linux ($1900!) and I didn't find the licensing to be difficult. It took me about 5 minutes to set up. Granted, there is no GUI for the license install/configuration step, but that really shouldn't be an obstacle. I will grant that for $1900, you'd think they could come up with a nice interface for _all_ parts of the install process.

        I agree about octave; I've been using it for a while and recently started using matlab again, and BOY is there a big difference (especially when it comes to graphics, and special things like sparse matrices).


  • I am a new mac person. I converted because of the unixyness of osx, since I primarily use various unix type machines for work.

    The only thing missing from my osx software arsonal was MATLAB (really -- everything else was unix freeware). Starting up an os9 background sucked.

    Is anyone else as happy as I am?
  • ..that I can get the OS X version for free. I just spent $1900 on an individual commercial linux license for my home-based scientific consulting biz, but I've got a dual G4/533 in addition to my dual P4/1.7 at home, and a mac in the office at school as well. The individual licenses actually allow you to install on as many machines as you want, as long as you agree to be the sole user and use only one copy at a time - but it may be platform-restricted.
  • Up until recently, I had been using ancient versions of MATLAB on some forgotten undergrad machines in my department. Looked and worked decent on the Apple Power Macintosh and Sun SPARCstation machines I was using. A few months ago, I began using MATLAB for real projects (read: I finally learned to how actually use the thing). =)

    But... let me tell you, the non-Windows versions of MATLAB 6.1 (aka MATLAB Release 12) stink. They must have used some wonky Windows-to-UNIX porting kit for the more recent versions, as the interface is totally Windows looking on the Solaris and Linux versions I've used. Sure, the whole package works great and Simulink has saved my skin more than once -- but the interface is terrible.

    Another app I've been using heavily is Maple. I started with one of the earlier revisions of Maple V and have since worked my way up thru Maple 6 to Maple 7. It's "only" a simbolic mathematics program, but it's a **VERY** well done cross-platform port. The Windows version looks like a Windows app. The "classic" Mac OS 8 / Mac OS 9 version looks like a Mac app. And the UNIX versions (commercial unices and Linux) look like nice, proper X11 apps (though perhaps a bit more Motif based than most GTK or Qt folks would like). Kudos to Maplesoft/Waterloo for supporting so many platforms in such a pleasent way.

    Now if only Matlab (which, BTW, uses part of the Maple engine for its symbolic math module) would only take a cue from Maple...

    (In a related note, I have no idea how well Mathematica works these days, but the screenshots look decent. The last time I used that app was on a NeXTstation -- it was a great NeXT port. Their Mac OS X version screenshots look pretty nice, too.)

    http://www.maplesoft.com
    http://www.mathematica .com
    • Mathematica wasn't so much ported to Nextstep as it was one of the original platforms on which Mathematica was released (Macintosh System 6 being one of the others). In fact, Mathematica was bundled with each Nextstation.

      It was probably pretty easy to bring Mathematica to OS X because they already had an Openstep version 3 (Cocoa is really just a newer version of Openstep). I will be using the OS X version of Mathematica soon, once our site license kicks in in June.
  • How about the return of AutoCAD? My consistant gripe has also been for 3DStudio, but with Maya's price cut I would be happy if AutoCAD MAC had 3d stair and window-in-wall tools like 3DSViz and good Maya support - oh, wait, Maya competes with 3DS - rats. OK, how about Architecure tools for Maya - two way AutoCAD import/export, 3D stair layout, various windows and doors in walls - oh, yeah, walls.

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