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This page provides background information on Mac OS X, to support information on statistical analysis software for Mac OS X.
Mac OS X is Apple’s new operating system that features a Unix core, many features of NextStep, and an updated Macintosh graphical user interface. For complete information, see Apple’s Mac OS X web pages.
Mac OS X is built upon Apple’s Darwin open source operating system. Both require at least a G3-equipped Macintosh computer.
Darwin is (in chronological order)
Additional information on Darwin is available at
There are two versions of Darwin that would be of most interest:
Darwin is missing the GUI that comes with Mac OS X, including Quartz (new graphics), classic Mac OS emulation and the “Cocoa” update of OpenStep. In fact, compared to Linux or other BSD system, it currently lacks a complete GUI. Specifically,
See the X on X web page for more info.
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There are four possible types of statistical applications that can run under Mac OS X: |
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Most (although not all) Mac OS statistical software packages that run on Mac OS 9 should run in the classic environment. They will be limited to classic printer drivers and limited in their exchange with Carbon and Cocoa apps, but otherwise will be fully supported.
The biggest impediment will be older applications that are not fully compatible with Mac OS 9. These include applications that cannot run on a PowerPC, aren’t compatible with Mac OS 8 (the Appearance Manager), and are not compatible with the HFS Extended file format introduced with Mac OS 8.1. However, there are very few programs, aside from utilities, that meet these barriers, and most older Mac statistical programs will indeed run in emulation under OS X. The main problems are that newer computers do not ship with OS 9 emulation ("Classic"), and support is expected to be completely dropped when OS X for MacTels (Macs running Intel processors) is brought out in 2006. We do expect someone to come out with a workaround such as Basilisk; the speed loss of emulation shouldn't be a major problem given the higher efficiency of older programs.
Most actively maintained statistics packages are expected to be “Carbonized” within about a year of the March 2001 release of OS X 10.0. This includes SPSS.
Very few statistical packages were ever made available for NextStep/OpenStep. The best known of which was Mathematica, which also has a (newer) Mac OS implementation, and has been released for OS X to very positive reviews. Mathematica is not an ideal statistics program, being designed primarily for mathematicians, but can do statistics. Stata is also available (see the OS X software page.)
Theoretically any software developed for (BSD) Unix should be compatible with Darwin and thus Mac OS X. However, these will almost always be line-oriented software packages without a graphical user interface. Usually they will also be distributed in source format and require user compilation and installation, although there is a version of the R software package that runs under Darwin and has graphical capabilities (via X11) on Mac OS X.
Mac OS 10.3 and later versions come with built-in X11 support which allows many Linux programs to be run in a graphical user environment. However, it is not always easy to compile software to run under Apple's X11, especially in 10.4 Tiger. Fortunately, many Web pages exist to help with individual programs.
Starting in 2006, Apple will be converting its computers to Intel processors. This will almost certainly mean the loss of SPSS for a while, given that SPSS is taking six months just to come up to speed on Tiger, and seems to have severe compatibility problems with any new system releases. Perhaps more important, all Classic programs will stop working on these new machines. We do expect a third-party Classic emulator, since there has already been considerable work in this area to get classic Mac programs to run under Windows; and the demand will almost certainly be higher for old Mac programs to run on new Macs. However, the only certain solutions are (a) getting or keeping a PowerPC-based Mac, and (b) moving to software designed for the new systems. Due to the ease of converting Cocoa programs, many manufacturers have already announced “MacTel” systems.
We expect statistical software to, in the whole, stop working under Intel, because Apple said that they were not going to support G4-specific operations (Altivec), which eliminates any high-performance math software from the recent past, and it seems that they are going to finally drop support for 68000 processors, which eliminates quite a few additional programs. SPSS has been sensitive to even minor OS changes, so we can assume current SPSS versions will not work under Intel.
The good news is that we fully expect most Mac statistics packages around today to come out with new, MacTel versions.
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Originally prepared by Joel West of the UCI Graduate School of Management. Copyright © 2000-2001 Joel West, Copyright © 2005-2008 Allpar, LLC. All rights reserved. Organizational change and organizational development articles ... Macintosh statistics software
![[Mac OS X architecture]](osxarchitecture.gif)