March 22, 2001–Wolfram Research, makers of the world’s leading technical computing system, announced today that Mathematica for Mac OS X will be commercially available this summer when OS X becomes the standard operating system on new Macintoshes. Customers who buy Mathematica for Macintosh now will be eligible to get the final Mac OS X version free when it is released. Wolfram Research plans to start shipping a preview beta version of Mathematica for Mac OS X to its Premier Service customers by early April.
“We have been running Mathematica for Mac OS X internally for over two years and have worked closely with Apple to optimize its performance,” said Theodore Gray, cofounder of Wolfram Research and chief architect of the Mathematica user interface. “Mathematica 4.1 running on Mac OS X has the makings of a remarkable environment for scientific computing. It is a no-compromise combination of speed, stability, capability, and ease.”
“The supercomputing speed of Apple’s Power Mac G4 provides an incredible environment for scientific computing, and with Mac OS X’s unparalleled performance and ease of use, it’s only going to get better,” said Clent Richardson, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations. “Mathematica is the most powerful software for doing calculations in science, engineering, and mathematics, and we’re excited to see Wolfram Research take advantage of the incredible technologies Mac OS X has to offer.”
The Mach 3.0 kernel and Unix-like foundation of Mac OS X allow this version of Mathematica to far surpass older Macintosh versions of Mathematica in speed, scalability, and the ability to handle calculations requiring open-ended amounts of memory. Mac OS X is the first true workstation operating system deployed as a personal-computer operating system.
Mathematica is the system that top professionals in industry, research, and education turn to when they need to perform demanding calculations. The current release of Mathematica, Version 4.1, includes greatly enhanced symbolic differential equation solvers and dramatic speed increases for statistical functions.
Professionals are not the only ones who use Mathematica. Like the Macintosh, Mathematica is popular on college campuses around the world. Students in engineering, mathematics, and other technical fields use Mathematica to expand their knowledge and to do their most serious number crunching. With Mathematica running on Mac OS X, they will be able to use the latest in Apple technology to make the most of their educational opportunities.