[R-SIG-Mac] Mac as R platform

[Jason Liao]

Thank you very much, both Simon and Prof. Leeuw. My focus is on the
ease  of development. Based on your feedback, Mac will be a good
choice. About the raw speed, I am using a Pentium M 1.7 Ghz notebook
and am extremely impressed by its speed (had been so frustrated by the
slow Sun Sparc workstation). 

I am not worried about cross-platform at this point. I am working on
some preliminary result for a grant proposal. I also like to listen to
music while I work and Mac would be a better choice than Linux for that
purpose.

Jason  

--- Jan de Leeuw <deleeuw at stat.ucla.edu> wrote:

> There are various reasons why the Mac is not the best option if you
> want raw speed.
> 
> -- The current dual core Intel chips used in Macs are mainly
> developed  
> for portables (i.e. they emphasize power saving). The next
> generation,
> available in July/August, will do a better job and will be used in
> the
> new towers.
> 
> -- The G5 is not designed to do fast floating point, and generally
> does
> not do a very good job at it.
> 
> -- OS X is handicapped by the Mach microkernel parts. This is
> becoming
> more and more obvious in webserving, database management, and  
> distributed
> computing. Rumor has it that Apple is working on both replacing the
> kernel and the HFS+ file system.
> 
> For my work this is all pretty irrelevant, but many others care. And 
> 
> with
> good reason.
> 
> I do think, however, that the Mac, expecially the MacBook Pro,  is a 
> 
> pretty good
> development machine -- especially my MacBook Pro, since it now  
> painlessly virtualizes
> XP Pro, Debian, and Solaris 10 as well.
> 
> 
> On May 8, 2006, at 23:11 , Simon Urbanek wrote:
> 
> > Jason,
> >
> > On May 5, 2006, at 12:07 PM, Jason Liao wrote:
> >
> >> Good morning. I am considering buying a new computer to develop an
> >> R package for multi-dimensional Monte Carlo simulation. One
> >> requirement is to call, from R, a Fortran 90 program about 1000
> >> lines of code. A  C++ version of that program is also available if
> >> desired.  Will the new Core Duo Mac be a good development platform
> >> in the sense that I will not need to struggle with too many
> >> technicalities in linking R with the compiled code? I am asking
> >> this because I saw that the binary Mac R distribution in fact has
> >> compilers bundled in it. I currently work mostly on Windows and
> was
> >> told that I will have a lot to download and configure if
> developing
> >> on Windows.
> >>
> >
> > in general I think Macs are pretty painless in terms of developing
> > packages for R. Most tools come right from Apple with the operating
> > system. To complement that the fortran compiler supplied with R
> (GNU
> > Fortran 95) supports F90, so you should be safe (although I'm not
> > sure how versatile such package would be). At the development stage
> > you shouldn't worry about universal binaries, either. Admittedly, I
> > develop even Windows programs on my Mac, because I find it easier
> to
> > cross-compile for Windows on a Mac than to do it in the horrible
> > Windows GUI, but that's another story ;). I don't know if that
> helps,
> > but those are just my 2 cents.
> > However, if you're interested in raw speed (i.e. you actually want
> to
> > run the simulations), you may be better off using dual-core AMD
> > Opterons with Linux or Quad-G5 PowerMacs - the Intel CPUs are not
> > necessarily fast (although Apple tries to make you believe
> > otherwise ;)).
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Simon
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > R-SIG-Mac mailing list
> > R-SIG-Mac at stat.math.ethz.ch
> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-mac
> >
> 
> ===
> Jan de Leeuw; Distinguished Professor and Chair, UCLA Department of  
> Statistics;
> Editor: Journal of Multivariate Analysis, Journal of Statistical  
> Software
> US mail: 8125 Math Sciences Bldg, Box 951554, Los Angeles, CA
> 90095-1554
> phone (310)-825-9550;  fax (310)-206-5658;  email:
> deleeuw at stat.ucla.edu
> .mac: jdeleeuw ++++++  aim: deleeuwjan ++++++ skype: j_deleeuw
> homepages: http://gifi.stat.ucla.edu ++++++
> http://www.cuddyvalley.org
>    
>
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> -------------------------
>            No matter where you go, there you are. --- Buckaroo Banzai
>                     http://gifi.stat.ucla.edu/sounds/nomatter.au
>    
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> 
> 
> 


Jason Liao, http://www.geocities.com/jg_liao
Dept. of Biostatistics, http://www2.umdnj.edu/bmtrxweb
University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey
683 Hoes Lane West, Piscataway‚ NJ 08854
phone 732-235-5429, School of Public Health office
phone 732-235-9824, Cancer Institute of New Jersey office