Apple claims Large Hadron Collider boffins prefer Macs

"especially if you need to run both new apps and old UNIX programs", and are too dumbassed to learn Linux.

I cant speak for physics use...
My sister is doing her final year PHD in Bioinformatics, she uses a Mac,

She is 99% clueless on hardware, cant even configure her network connections when she changes LAN's,

I work with a load of subcontractors in IT, programmers/coders/back end web stuff etc.
Everyone runs XP and Linux dual boot.
Everyone,,,
no macs and no vista

Basically if you know what you are doing, and want to do it for free, its all on Linux.

If you are clueless, buy a mac(or if you want to be like the cool media guy on MAc/PC ad),
& btw, if you're just a complete idiot and dont want to be able to do any work, buy Vista

Gotta chuckle at Apple over this one. Didn't those infamous ads try to make out that the PC guy was uncool because he did serious work not hip things like home video editing? I guess my Windows box just got a lot cooler cos all the nerds are using Macs! :)

"Apple claims Large Hadron Collider boffins prefer Macs .... Which could be why it doesn't work" .... By Nick Farrell Monday, 29 December 2008, 12:21

Doesn't work? It's already sucking all the dollars out of the US Economy and it only had a short shakedown trial.

You really will have to pay more attention, Nick, although it may very well be that ITs XXXXtraDimensional NEUKlearer Physics will always remain a Total Informational Awareness and/or Alien Mystery to you. However, you can take Comfort in the Fact that you will definitely not be alone in the Field though, as it is, ...... well, Advanced Applied Particular Physics wouldn't even begin to do ITs Sentient Science Disciplines and HexPeriMental Research Programs and ProgramMIng Projects, Justice.

The LHC is part of CERN. Many moons ago a certain Tim Berners-Lee was working at CERN when he came up with the world's first web browser and web server. These were written and run on a NeXT workstation under NeXTSTEP. NeXT was bought by Apple and NeXTSTEP evolved into Mac OS X.
So the idea that this is in anyway a new occurrence, or that Physicists don't like/won't touch Apple machines (who are in a habit of offering educational discounts BTW) is just plain crazy. They've been using this type of kit longer than most of the readers of this site have been using computers (and I know some idiot is bound to leap out and say how they've been using computers since the days of ENIAC or some such relic of history, that doesn't put them in the majority here).

I know what's going on. As mathematicians, they think that the usefullness of a computer is directly proportional to its price. Therefore Macs should be extremely good. Linux is for free, then it's crap, even though it has all of their idiossyncratic requisites.

Cox is right, albeit a little late, while Heero's dad's comment suggests that he hasn't looked at a Mac since OS X appeared; before OS X, Macs were closed, but now the opposite is true.

My wife is an astrophysicist (as was I before I sold my soul to commercial IT) and migrated from Linux to OS X about six years ago. We ported a large software package that she uses (~1 million lines of FORTRAN and C) with a few hours work to the point where it passed its test, verification and benchmark suite.

We see the same thing at science/technology conferences; Macs have frequently dominated over the last few years.

As for remarks about FORTRAN code being old/out of date/obsolete, that's nonsense. FORTRAN is still the language of choice for high performance, but is often combined with C for more complex applications that require sophisticated I/O, memory management, GUIs etc., and that's why the Macs are so great; OS X has pretty much the same Unix API as Solaris, Linux etc.

Windows looks like a toy by comparison, especially for low-latency/real-time control (although Solaris is probably still king here, especially for heavily-thrashed big systems).

PS, isn't CERN the place where the web - so beloved of INQ-like IT weenies - was invented? (Yes, of course I know it is, but they toy-techies need a reminder).

the Brian Cox who was in D-Ream

and I agree with so many others.
if they are such good Unixers then of course they can install unix on their pc's can they not?

Oh yeah, keep bashing the guy who's smarter than the whole staff of Inquirer combined. I don't care if he uses Apple iAbacus or MS Slide Rule. If he can build Atlas detector, he's probably intelligent enough to choose his computer and resist fanboism...

A Freudian slip, or parapraxis, is an error in speech, memory, or physical action that is believed to be caused by the subconscious mind. Sir Isaac Newton was sitting under an apple tree, an apple fell on his head, and he suddenly thought of the Universal Law of Gravitation. A fruitful Large Hadron Collider should fall on Cox, providing a Newtonian slip.

Nick is just a Mac hater for some reason. I think he does it for the attention on his posts. My Macbook is my main computer for music, my pictures and everything except games even though I have a mid tower gaming rig with Microbloat on it. Last time I opened the terminal in OS X it use unix command type interface.

Mac OS X _is_ a UNIX, no matter how Brian Cox tries to spin it. UNIX is legacy from the late 1960's. Fact is that CERN dropped modern architectures, like VMS, in favour of UNIX. They promised that with UNIX everything would be standardised. If you take a look at the CERNLIB, you will find what kind of a mess UNIX is. Now, why are not all UNIX systems supported by newer developments like Root or GEANT4? That should be no problem, if you believe Cox et al. (in reality it is).

Do not believe these people. They have lied for decades. They have only one thing in mind, and that is their job. Junk software like UNIX (Linux, Mac OS X, BSD, SVR4, you name it) is good one reason. It keeps these people busy for decades.

Of course Brun, Cox et al. know all about modern software. I guess that is why they use global pointers in their C++ code (yes, THAT is how software is being developed at CERN).

My dad's an idiot he bought a mac used it for a week then went and bought a PC, he's a happy camper now.

As the Muon1 Distributed Particle Accelerator Design (DPAD) project, only runs under windows. This project is one of the very rare 2nd generation distributed computing projects (able to handle ultra-large problems that would be beyond the ability of 1st generation 'brute force' systems) and is run, by one guy, at the RAL. He doesn't use a mac.

http://www.stephenbrooks.org/muon1/

"Boffins are still using Fortran quite a lot which is easier to compile directly on the Mac, he claimed. He seems to think it is a pain to compile all the old legacy programs."

That statement make absolutely no sense at all. The high-level language you choose to use on an operating system does not care 'which' operating system you use (unless you use system calls, of course). There are Fortran compilers for Macs, Linux & Windows - I (still) use Digital Visual Fortran on my Windows machine and as long as the code is Fortran compliant, the compiler does not care how old the code is.

That guy might be a physicist but he does not know much about programming.

Cheers,
Jeff

Really?

My father is a PHD in physics, and goes to more conferances then I can count in any given year... and he happens to be a big Unix/Linux type of guy.

Last we spoke about this whole Mac craze thing, which would have been over x-mas dinner couple days ago, he laughed at the idea of Macs ever becoming populare within the physics circle because of how closed off they are, and being unable to interface with the technology and equipment that they use in day to day operations.

"In short, the glorious Apple spinners have found one of the boffins working on the project who happens to like the toy computers."

How can a computer that runs OS X and can simultaneously run XP, Vista (gag), Solaris or most flavors of Linux, be called a toy? Anyone who believes the Macs are toys, have never seriously tried using a Mac and haven't seen the sun shining for years.

..the fact-free blithering of Farrrrelll, the crystal-bothering Gitwizard, or the clueless pro/anti flamebois.

Kill them all, debate the existence of God, and let either Him or thermodynamics sort the buggers out.

Yes, the "greater internet f**kwad theory" proves its worth yet again.

Damage to the LHC was caused by an electrical fault that led to an electrical arc puncturing the cooling enclosure of one of the magnets.

So what if the guy likes to use a Mac? At least he is smart enough to have good, sound reasons for using it, and not the typical fan-boy reasons like "Squeee! It's pretty!" I hope they paid him handsomely; scientists don't get enough respect these days.

"He said a physicist's ulimtate machine would be a UNIX machine that runs things like PowerPoint or Adobe Photoshop"
Why would a decent physicist use Powerpoint? In my experience, it's nowhere near a decent tool for presenting scientific information. And Photoshop? Really, why?

Yes, Macs are somewhat common in science, but odds are most if not all of the PCs around there aren't running Windows. All that UNIX stuff can be done just as well and sometimes better on a Linux box. In fact, CERN has its own customized Linux distro (Scientific Linux).

So yes, this is great Mac press, but it's another one of the cases where Apple is playing off of the "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" dichotomy to prevent people from knowing that there is a third choice out there.

(It's not hard to see why they do this since Linux is basically OSX without the Apple premium tax.)

Nick,

The story is, in my experience, a pretty accurate depiction of the notebook landscape in physics. You'd see that if you attended the SciDAC meeting of American computational scientists each year. I've also seen a high adoption rate for Macs among physicists in Europe as well.

The reasons given in the interview are right on target: OS X offers a unix desktop with a well crafted GUI and a complete set of documentation/presentation tools.

As a disclosure: I've been in the computer industry for 25+ years. I've been a Linux developer and use Linux in my day-to-day work as the Chief Engineer for a computer systems company. I've written code for and lived in all kinds of computing environments: IBM OS/VS/CMS, PDP-10/20, Xerox Alto, BSD, VAX/VMS, Alpha/VMS/Linux/Dunix. I'm way beyond starry-eyed-fanboi stuff. But I find my Mac is
the best fit for what I do with a lap top. (I carried an XP machine around for a long time, did the dual boot with Linux thing, even tried a pure linux laptop with the open office stuff.) I switched to a MacBook when I saw how well it was working for them.

I suspect much of the bashing is a pose, it does make for more interesting copy and probably draws a few eyeballs. But it is not very good reportage. Amid all the smarmy remarks about fanboys and "Jesus phones" you manage to miss the point: there is something about the user/customer experience that motivates people to buy Apple products. Apparently your thesis is that the "something" is a mass delusion. I would suggest that the story is more complicated than that.

By ignoring the more complicated story you may be producing good copy, (and at times, quite funny) but you're probably missing a really good story.

So, keep up the fun writing, but perhaps Nick needs a pseudonym to write some serious copy on what is going on with Apple products.

matt

OHH SNAP !

nice call ssj4Gogeta

and we are all forgetting they are using a MAC but they are using X86 technology!
in the end we all know who and what is supreme
THE PC and X86
soon apple will get sick of trying to sue pyrstar (which it can't win, its not illegal to install it on another PC, from selling its OS to normal PC owners, and actually star reaping the massive amounts of Coin it will get for doing it. make a ATI driver, and a Nvidia, and a Xfi driver and you have at least 50% of frustrated Vista Users, and what 10 Biliion dollars in Jobs pocket

It's actually not that hard to believe. Out of the 5 Physics Professors I've had 2 used Macs. And in general, looking around campus at what my Professors carry around, Apple notebooks are the single most common laptop. PC/Windows laptops from all manufacturers are still more common that Mac laptops, but dividing up by manufacturer there are more Apple notebooks than Dell individually, Lenovo individually, etc. And these aren't Arts Professors teaching History, since I'm in Engineering these are Physics Professors, Chemistry Professors, Engineers, Math Professors, etc.

So it isn't that hard for me to believe that academics and researchers use a lot of Macs because I see it every day.

"hen to cap it off, this particular boffin works for a science project which is broken due to a technical fault caused by someone getting their calculations wrong."

Did they use a Mac? lol They should sue Apple for that.

“The 17-inch MacBook Pro is my main computer, but I've got the MacBook Air as well, which is fantastic. It’s my travel computer, and I travel all the time. Syncing them up used to be a pain, but now, with MobileMe, the calendars sync up and the address books sync together. It’s very useful if you regularly use two computers, which I do.”

I wonder how much Apple paid for this...