Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Tuesday, October 8, 2002

Testing Mathematica -- Comment()
I collected my posts about Mathematica 4.2 into a story titled Mathematica 4.2 for Mac OS X. If I have the time I'll write down additional impressions and observations about the software.

You may want to compare these experiences with my review of Matlab 6.5.

Screenshots of Mathematica 4.2 -- Comment()
I made some additional screenshots of Mathematica 4.2 on Mac OS X. Here is help on minimization, and an example from the graphics gallery.

I also tested the new version by retrieving a Mathematica package for hyperbolic geometry I wrote about five years ago. Everything seemed to work, so here is a screenshot of hyperbolic geometry in the unit disk. This package was a pain to write, because there was a serious bug in Mathematica when drawing arcs of a circle. Fortunately the package still works.

Testing Mathematica 4.2 for Mac OS X -- Comment()
I just received and installed Mathematica 4.2 for Mac OS X, which I ordered almost four months ago. A long wait!

The installation was easy: just copy a directory from the cd to the hard disk. Registration was also easy, although the long password was tedious to type in.

Mathematica behaves quite nicely on my 450 MHz G4 Macintosh. The user interface seems to be fitted into the Mac OS X environment. Here is a first screenshot of testing the software:

-- Comment()
JD's New Media Musings writes: "Steve Gibson has a web based port scanner you can use for free at http://grc.com. Look for the Shields Up! links. He also has some good descriptions of ports and stuff from a Windows PC point of view."

The report on my iBook (using currently a public WLAN network) told the following:

All attempts to get any information from your computer have FAILED. (This is very uncommon for a Windows networking-based PC.) Relative to vulnerabilities from Windows networking, this computer appears to be VERY SECURE since it is NOT exposing ANY of its internal NetBIOS networking protocol over the Internet.

Also, all the ports the system probed were closed. This was as expected.

-- Comment()
Mac OS X Report Card: October 2002: "Apple has done well (the grade would definitely have been lower before Jaguar, and much lower still before Mac OS X 10.1). But as remains obvious to those of us who have used the Mac for years, Apple still has plenty of work to do in core areas." (O'Reilly Network via MyAppleMenu) [MyAppleMenu]

-- Comment()
Mac OS X: More Creative Than You Think: "It's true, Mac OS X is great for geeks. Guilty as charged. But as a photographer, amateur movie maker, and former (bad) musician, I can also tell you that this is a great platform for creativity." (O'Reilly Network via MyAppleMenu) [MyAppleMenu]

-- Comment()
RealOne For OS X Beta 2 Adds Subscription Services, More: "The new version provides premium RealOne subscription content and other new features to Mac users." (MacCentral via MyAppleMenu) [MyAppleMenu]

-- Comment()
Apple's .Mac service goes down again: "As the company phases out its free iTools online services and tries to bump customers to fee-based .Mac, the replacement is not cooperating. It's gone down twice now in as many weeks." [CNET News.com]