Filed under: Software, Education
Mathematica 6 ships
You may recall that back at WWDC'05 when Jobs announced the switch to Intel, one of the companies he invited on stage to discuss creating Universal Binaries was Wolfram Research, whose flagship product Mathematica is probably the leading desktop mathematics application. Mathematica has now reached version 6 and the new features are manifold, representing (according to Wolfram) the "most important advance in the 20-year history of Mathematica." Not having much understanding of these things beyond attempting to use it back in college to do my calculus homework for me, it does seem that there's a lot new, including Dynamic Interactivity and "over 1000 new computational functions & interface enhancements."One downside of the new release for Mac users, however, is that version 6 remains a 32 bit application in OS X despite the availability of 64 bit versions for Windows, Linux, and various Unix flavors. Mathematica 6 is available now at a variety of different price points (education, etc.), with the standard professional version coming in at a cool $2495 for Mac.
Thanks, Stern!
Update: It was pointed out in the comments below that, although it is not enabled by default, it is possible to get 64 bit support on Intel in OS X by following these instructions. Thanks, Geoff!
Get a WordPress.com Blog
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
5cents said 10:32AM on 5-02-2007
I had Mathematica 5 on a semester student license and while powerful, it was certainly lacking and half assed in several areas. I hope 6 is better.
Reply
Geoffrey Hutchison said 10:52AM on 5-02-2007
The article is a little misleading. It's not as if Wolfram hasn't made a 64-bit kernel (math engine) available. There is one for Intel, but it's disabled by default because they found a bug in Mac OS X.
http://support.wolfram.com/mathematica/systems/macintosh/osx/32bitratherthan64bit.html
Now if you want G5/PowerPC 64-bit support, you'll want to contact them and request it: support@wolfram.com
Reply
teece said 2:09PM on 5-02-2007
Mathemtica is an amazingly powerful system or mathematical programming. There is, literally, nothing it can't do (assuming it's a problem a computer can handle). It's a Turing-complete virtual machine.
It's ability to handle symbolic math is amazing.
Having said that, most first time users simply do not get Mathematica when they try it out. It's not especially user-friendly. Worse, it uses a style of programming (functional, rule-based, like Lisp and Prolog, respectively), that very few people are familiar with (even including programmers). That style of programming is a bit counter-intuitive at first. The learning curve will generally be steep, especially for non-programmers.
But if you spend a little time with it, Mathematica is amazing. I absolutely love it. For example, back when I was in college, I convinced both of my stat professors (for prob. & stat., design of experiments, and prob. theory) to let me use Mathematica, rather than Minitab or SPSS. Both thought that was "impossible" because Mathematica couldn't do those stat functions. Hogwash -- it's a completely programmable environment with amazing support for mathematical thinking. Even the graphics are easily programmable. So, since version 4 lacked box-plots, I just coded up my own.
Now if only it weren't so damn expensive...
Reply
DD said 2:27PM on 5-02-2007
So buying this package is worth an extra £800 in the UK? I don't think so!!!
more RIP OFF Britain...
Reply
Joe Bolte said 4:52PM on 5-02-2007
They also launched the Wolfram Demonstrations Proejct, a gallery of interactive examples that run on the free Mathematica Player. It's basically like 1200 different freeware applets. Check it out. http://demonstrations.wolfram.com
Reply
Stern said 12:41PM on 5-04-2007
Though the base cost in the U.S. is $2500, if you don't plan to use it for your work, they apparently have "hobbyist" and "retiree" pricing that is more reasonable. They don't advertise this on their website, but you can call and ask.
Reply