OSX10.4.8 out

[Viro]

They've improved the performance of OpenGL too, I think. Played a little World of Warcraft yesterday, and it was noticeably smoother, even when I bumped the resolution up to native (1280 x 800 for my macbook) and set the environment and texture details to high.

[Thank The Cheese]

why is the intel 10.4.8 so much larger than the PPC (31MB vs 206MB)? just out of interest.

[fryke]

Rosetta. The whole PPC emulation layer was probably replaced for the improvements, so there's more code. Also, much Tiger code is still PowerPC only for PowerPC, while it's universal on intel machines AFAIK. This will change with Leopard, where we all get Universal code, which will probably mean that the harddrive requirements for PowerPC Macs will go up a tad.

[Viro]

The made huge changes to the Rosetta layer, most particularly with the BLAS/LAPACK libraries, which is used heavily by science apps. That's what I was looking forward to in this release, as I thought Matlab would run much faster. Turns out, they broke the X11 stuff, so Matlab doesn't run at all

[fryke]

What does Matlab development say about the issue? I don't think nobody tested this against 10.4.8 before release... Is there an update in the making? I get that it's a problem - and it happened for other apps in other system updates as well. But it's not like Apple usually just "f** up" a whole part of their system without testing it properly. Usually, it's a change they _have_ to make in order to achieve something. And that would lead to some development effort for companies using that specific area. Are other X11 apps affected?

As far as I can see, Matlab is still in heavy development for Mac OS X (intel). There should be a beta version for Professional users. Might have a look at their site (although I only found info on it on www.macresearch.com through google...)...

[Viro]

Matlab is supposedly in development for Intel and it's scheduled for release in early... er... Fall 2006... no wait, Spring 2007. Assuming they do not push back the release date further.

The beta program exists for professional users and students, and I'm lucky enough to have managed to sign on to the beta as a student. Will be getting my CD any time soon.

My experience with Mathworks is that they're a really $h!t company, and they've been sitting on improving the Mac port for years. Mathematica ported their suite to Mac OS X in 6 hours, while Matlab has taken over a year and a half to deliver the goods. It's a shame that Mathematica isn't as suited to numerical analysis, if not I'd switch in a heart beat. R for Mac OS X, which is free is far far more polished than Matlab for Mac OS X is, and I have doubts the 2007 release of Matlab will come anywhere close.

From my 3+ years of experience with Matlab, I honestly cannot recommend Matlab to anybody. Especially if they're on the Mac. If you've purchased the student version, you'll have to purchase a new copy if you want to get any service packs. Yes, you do not get free patches. You do not even pay a nominal fee for a patch. You pay the full price of a new copy for a service pack. Oh, and service packs break whatever toolboxes you have purchased, so you'll need to buy new versions too.

When R15 comes, sometime in 2007, students will be forced to pay the full price of a student copy again. If you want me to name a company that is the epitome of evil, it's not Microsoft. It's not Apple. It's Mathworks.