Testimonials
Why Mac for science? Let the scientists who already use the Mac tell you themselves.
Price/Performance Value
“The increase in productivity resulting from the size of the displays cannot be overstated. The larger displays allow me to look at the data in detail while retaining an understanding of how the details fit within its geologic context. I cannot imagine going back to smaller displays.”
— Jon Gittins, Thrust Belt Imaging
“Xserve RAID was half the price of the Dell/EMC solution and gave us four times the storage space. It was just an amazing benefit, cost-wise.”
— Michael Barmada, University of Pittsburgh
“We were really happy with how competitive Apple was price-wise,” says Reed. “ We expected to pay a premium, but the cost per node, especially given the processor performance, was really competitive.”
— David Reed, Florida Museum of Natural History
“High-performance computing is at the core of our business, so we need to squeeze every last ounce of performance out of our analytical platform. Our Apple Xserve G5 cluster gives us a huge performance boost without adding a lot of complexity or administrative overhead.”
— Cole Harris, Exagen Diagnostics, Inc.
Advanced Technology for Scientific Computing
“The Apple Workgroup Cluster for Bioinformatics provides a great foundation for solving this need. It supports big analyses, and I can add power tools for visualization, integration, interactive data mining and automated query construction.”
— Dr. Lee, Institute for Genomics and Proteomics, Molecular Biology Institute, UCLA
“Xgrid dramatically increases the processing power we have available for compute-intensive processes,” says Jacob, “and because it’s built into Mac OS X, it’s virtually effortless.”
— Christian Jacob, University of Calgary, Canada
“The decision to adopt the Mac platform [for the HIPerWall] was based on many factors that included the form factor and resolution of the Apple Cinema Displays, a robust UNIX-based operating system that was tightly integrated with open source components, and the ease of administration and use.”
— Frank Wessel, Irvine’s Center of GRAVITY, University of California — Irvine
Productivity and Streamlined Workflow
“I was on call last night. My resident contacted me at home to review a CT scan performed to rule out appendicitis. In just a few minutes, he transferred the study to my home system — a Power Mac G5 Quad computer. I was able to view the study and perform multi-planar axial/sagittal/coronal reformations in real time, all on my home computer!”
— Dr. Edward Zaragoza, Santa Monica UCLA Medical Center
It is a tremendous advantage that the Mac can read PC-generated files, such as PowerPoint presentations, with all the convenience of only having to use one computer without missing a step.”
— Dr. Aregullin, Cornell University Conservatory
“For most of the folks who use Macs, it’s the only platform they need. They do everything — research, data gathering, analysis, publications and communications — all on one machine. That’s really nice.”
— Mike Landavere, College of Life Sciences, University of Maryland
“The Mac enables scientists to really focus on their work and not get caught up in the details of how to move a file around or get a task done. It enables people to do their jobs more effectively than they can on other platforms.”
Robust Developer Platform
“Mac OS X is blazingly fast. Its architecture, with the faster front-side bus, the faster memory, the incredibly fast G5 CPU, makes for fast and efficient development.”
— Tom Condon, Vertex Pharmaceuticals
“Everything on the platform is integrated with Xcode. You get to work with a graphical user interface, and the entire debugging environment is just amazing.”
“We were extremely impressed with the Mac OS X development tools. In relatively short order I went from having nothing to having a complicated application, with very little effort on my part.”
“By compiling and porting bioinformatics applications to the Mac, I’ve created my ideal environment, with access to both Mac and UNIX applications through Mac OS X.”
— William Van Etten, The BioTeam
Mac OS X. The Ideal Platform for Scientific Computing.
“The combination of user-friendly management and all the tools available in the UNIX environment make Macs a perfect platform for scientists, bioinformaticians and students.”
— Dr. Ed DeLong, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
“Our profession is overwhelmingly Macintosh. It’s just so much easier to use. It’s more dependable. It’s more intuitive. It’s faster and it’s just more elegant.”
— Scott Thorn Barrows, University of Chicago Medical Center
“Apple’s legendary ease of use, along with the GUI management infrastructure and integrated suite of open source services in Mac OS X, was very attractive to us. We regard Mac OS X as the gold standard when it comes to usability.”
— Calvin W. Lowe, Bowie State University
“Our lab will use the cluster as a bioinformatics tool to mine the non-coding region of the human genome, discover novel biomarkers for lung cancer from proteomics studies, personalize cancer care with computational predictions, and support the development of cancer vaccines via high-throughput screening.”
— Dr. Simon Lin, Northwestern University
Ease of Use
“The hardest part of the installation was finding a screwdriver.” “We went from having nothing to having the cluster up, running and configured in about an hour — all without arcane UNIX commands or intimidating assembly code.”
“The Xserve cluster, together with the BioTeam iNquiry package, makes a turnkey solution for getting up and running very quickly. And that was something we really needed.”
— Craig Benham, UC Davis Genome Center
“I wasn’t brought up in UNIX administration, but it wasn’t hard to administer this cluster.”
— Michael Gaunt, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Advancing Drug Discovery
“Macs give our scientists all the tools they need for research and production — from Perl script development to tools that enable mass spectrometry, sequence and molecular structure analysis. And they support us on the business end as well.”
— Carlos Del Castillo, IT manager at Cell Signaling Technology (CST) in Beverly, Massachusetts
“I looked at the plot; it compared the time it took NCBI BLAST and Apple/Genentech BLAST to execute comparisons. The plot for regular BLAST started out and leveled off; the plot for A/G BLAST was a straight line that went up at a 45-degree angle.”
— Dr. Will Gilbert, Hubbard Center for Genome Studies at the University of New Hampshire
Featured Profiles
Virginia Commonwealth University:
Understanding the Human Heart
With a WebPAX system built on Xserves, doctors at the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center can now see the heart in motion on any web browser.
Thrust Belt Imaging:
The Tools for Accurate Seismic Imaging
To keep the risks of oil exploration to a minimum, Thrust Belt Imaging implemented a powerful imaging system based on Xserves and Apple Cinema Displays.
Induquímica Laboratorios:
Streamlining the Business of Science
To facilitate its expansion into forensic DNA analysis and genomic research, Induquímica Laboratorios replaced its Windows system with Macs.
Felice Frankel:
Scientific Discovery Through Visualization
Felice Frankel’s beautiful portrayals of nature’s phenomena are unmatched in their capacity to communicate science and inspire discoveries.
