IDL is now available for download for Intel-based macintoshes. As I’m told, it’s
one installer that will install either Intel or PPC binaries depending on
what system you have. It’s also finally labelled correctly at the ITTVIS
download page web site.
The other “unix tar file” Mac download I guess is not for Intel
systems, and they still haven’t updated their platform FAQ, but oh well.
Anyone with an Intel Mac who is running IDL, if you could give me some
performance comparisons, that’d be sweet.
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IDL 6.3 is out today, but it only runs on PowerPC based Macs. An email to the RSI support
staff however garnered a response. IDL should be availabel for Intel Based
macs in July, possibly as early as late June.
With IRAF running on Intel thanks to the IRAF.net gang, the last piece of the
Intel puzzle for astronomers should soon be in place. I’d be very interested in anyone
with benchmarks of code running on Intel-Based macs once IDL is out in a month or so.
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Check out iraf.net right now for links to binaries of IRAF and some external packages running natively on Intel Macintoshes! If you have a Macbook or intel Mac mini, here’s your chance to test them out and help find any bugs, etc.
FYI, it has been reported that IRAF will run in rosetta fairly painlessly. Can IRAF run in a mixed mode where some external packages are in rosetta and some native? I don’t know, I bet not. Someone wants to buy ME a Mac mini I’ll let you know. 
Update My Universal Binary of the IRAF Button is now available on the IRAF Button page.
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It took a while, but the IRAF Button is now a universal binary. The project goes back to I think the Project Builder days, so I had to replace the main.m code and “upgrade” the target in Xcode, along with some other changes, but now it’s a Universal Binary, will run natively on Intel-based Macs.
Of course, there’s probably no performance difference at all – Applescript based applications can’t possibly benefit much from being native… I bet it would run virtually the same under Rosetta, but still.
What we really need is IRAF running native on Intel, so if you haven’t already make a donation to IRAF.net
Also, since no one as far as I know is running the IRAF button on an Intel Mac, I may wait a bit before uploading this.
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If you want an Intel-native version of IRAF as soon as possible, the first step is to get an Intel-IRAF box in the hands of IRAF developers. I suggest you visit the IRAF.net page and make a donation. I guess it’ll be an intel based iMac, since that’s the cheapest option at the moment. You can see that they certainly want to do the port, but need a machine first.
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So, I exchange a couple of emails with Mike Fitzpatrick over at NOAO. He seems to think supporting the new “MacTel” machines shouldn’t be too hard.
Assuming there’s wide community interest… I don’t really see a problem with the Intel switch from the IRAF side.. It would have to be a new architecture to support native compilation
(I have my doubts about the performance/reliability of Rosetta running PPC
IRAF binaries), but it shouldn’t be a difficult port since we don’t use
Apple-specific frameworks.
Similarly, he later says that they’ll worry about it when they have an Intel/Mac machine, but that they’re current concerns are with getting it to compile using GCC 4.0 on Tiger, and if they should stick with f2c or go to g77.
My guess is that once it compiles on gcc 4, getting it to compile on Intel shouldn’t be too hard. Let’s hope there just isn’t too long a delay, as I’m sure someone will email me the day the first MacTel machine arrives asking if IRAF will run on it.
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