Mac OS X in Science

Mac OS X brings the benefits of a UNIX-based foundation to a modern desktop operating system. Apple engineers built the core of Mac OS X from the ground up using open source and open standards based on the Mach 3.0 microkernel and FreeBSD5, providing power, security and stability for Mac users. The power of UNIX combined with the simplicity and usability of the Macintosh interface, make Mac OS X the ideal platform for scientific computing.

A Single Platform for All Your Work

With Mac OS X, you can run all your favorite GUI, UNIX and productivity applications; browse the Internet; and manage email — all in a single integrated environment. In fact, Mac OS X is the only operating system that natively runs Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop and thousands of productivity applications — all side by side with traditional command line, X11 and Java applications.

A Wealth of Applications

The world’s leading developers have ported their applications to the Mac platform. All the important open source and commercial applications you’re familiar with enable you to do your research. You’ll also find applications in a broad and expanding range of scientific disciplines as well as cross-platform tools for high-performance computing, visualization and data base management. And because Mac OS X is UNIX-based, open source and based on open standards, development and porting of new applications is ongoing and accelerating.

“Xserve will be very important in biotech, entertainment, and creative production. Apple can offer those markets both desktops and servers that run the same operating system and are, compared to what customers have been using, very attractively priced … This is a UNIX server for the masses, from the only company yet to make UNIX mass-market desktop OS, too.”

— David Coursey, ZDNet AnchorDesk

Developer Tools

Mac OS X offers developers a robust, GUI-based developer environment based on standard GNU compilers, debuggers and UNIX libraries. Apple’s powerful Xcode integrated developer environment offers features comparable to what you’d find in expensive, commercial IDEs. You can program and run any number of scripting languages from regular shell scripts to perl, python and ruby. AppleScript Studio lets you add a graphical user interface to shell scripts and send events to and manage multiple applications. And with IBM’s XLF and XLC compilers and GCC 3.3, you’ve got all the tools you need to develop your applications.

Mac OS X Server

Mac OS X Server, which is included with XServe, provides flexible and powerful tools that help you manage shared resources such as file servers and printers across your network, with no per-user, per-device fees. Support for Mac, Windows and UNIX clients lets you easily integrate Mac OS X Server with your existing enterprise infrastructure. Mac OS X Server provides advanced features for Mac OS X clients as well as easy-to-use tools that let you manage quotas and access privileges from a central directory. The unlimited client version of Mac OS X Server is a highly affordable choice for large user bases.

Attractively Priced

“Xserve will be very important in biotech, entertainment, and creative production,” writes David Coursey for ZDNet AnchorDesk. “Apple can offer those markets both desktops and servers that run the same operating system and are, compared to what customers have been using, very attractively priced … This is a tremendous offering for small business, especially those that currently run Unix-based or Windows-based vertical apps. … This is a UNIX server for the masses, from the only company yet to make UNIX a mass-market desktop OS, too.”