LabVIEW
Labview and Apple Desktops?
Cory K wrote:LabVIEW 2009's auto-multithreading For loops FTW!
Which don't run on 40% of the Macs out there..... Whoopee.
Nickerbocker wrote:LabVIEW targets engineers and programmers. If you can't figure out how to use LabVIEW and your reasoning is that Windows is too complicated for you, then I wouldn't recommend learning LabVIEW.
@Nickerbocker
I think you need to review your LV history. I have been living it for the last 20 years, it started on the Mac because the OS capabilities were so superior. Having a system targeted for even scientists, much less engineers and programmers that is simple and easy to use, is good! Your reasoning seems to echo closer to that there is some value in "being hit on the head lessons". There is no real virtue or macho in having things take unnecessarily long and require extra mind numbing click though boxes full of obscure phrases that don't actually add to the task at hand.
In fact I set up and installed a windows system last week to handle an RT/FPGA pxi crate. What a nightmare and waste of my time for something that normally takes an hour. It was just nasty. This isn't a problem of "too complicated" but stupidly complicated that I don't have time for. The fact that I suffered this last week is probably why I needed to rant this Friday about it.
As you point out it is not a minority. I think of it more as one of the latest Apple advertisements put it, if you are willing to compromise, use windows. Maybe it is the old RFK phrase of "Some folks see what is and ask why? I see what can be and ask why not".
Believe me, most of NI has heard from me about increased Mac support! 🙂
As for which windows, an example is the installer, if I try to queue up a bunch of installs so I can get some real work done, each install doesn't ask all the questions at the front, but starts the install, after several minutes then comes back and asks if I really want to install packages by file name which is some obscure 8.3 compatible thing then when acknowledged then looks at the packages for many minutes and then comes back and asks if I really want to install. That means I have to keep coming back to the keyboard to tell it that what I asked it to do was really what I wanted to do.
In addition, if there is an install going on a second install merely quits. Unlike the Apple installer where it just tells me that the second instance will politely wait for the first to complete and then go ahead. The system is truly multi-tasking in an intelligent way and not wasting my time. This isn't to compare all the features of each installer, but just one of myriad examples of actual usefulness of a good human interface. Do the "features" of the windows edition outweigh the pain of dealing with the OS interface? YMMV.
We are getting way OT here. The answer to the original question is that LV runs well on Apple Desktops. It depends if you use some specialized tools which merely means that you need to determine what features you really will be using. If it is only a few and rare cases, consider running those in a VM such a VMWare Fusion or Parallels Desktop both of which run LV quite well to give the ultimate flexible machine setup. If there is a tool that you really want on the Apple platform, then post to the NI product suggestion center.
