Simon:

I sent part of your post to Steve Jobs and he wrote back (!). Here's  
what he said. Is he still dancing around the issue about gfortran?

Tracy

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Steve Jobs <sjobs@apple.com>
> Date: March 20, 2011 3:29:01 PM EDT
> To: "tlightcap@lagrange.edu" <tlightcap@lagrange.edu>
> Subject: Fwd: R and your stance on Fortran
>
>
>>
>> Xcode 4 (and our general evolution away from gcc to clang/LLVM)  
>> does not change the availability of Fortran (or the R programming  
>> language) on the Mac.  GNU will continue to distribute GCC (and  
>> gfortran) for the Mac and code generated by that compiler will  
>> continue to integrate with code built with our modern clang/LLVM  
>> tools.  (As an aside, our recommended solution for Fortran on the  
>> Mac has long been the Intel Fortran compiler -- it generates much  
>> better performing code than GCC's Fortran).
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Sent from my iPad
>>>
>>> Begin forwarded message:
>>>
>>>> Resent-From: sjobs@apple.com
>>>> From: Tracy Lightcap <tlightcap@lagrange.edu>
>>>> Date: March 17, 2011 9:38:32 AM PDT
>>>> Resent-To: steve+sjobs2@apple.com
>>>> To: steve@apple.com
>>>> Subject: R and your stance on Fortran
>>>>
>>>> Steve:
>>>>
>>>> I use R as my main stats engine, as do a lot of Mac users;  
>>>> there's even a list serv for Mac R users. Now I read this in one  
>>>> of the posts there:
>>>>
>>>> As Brian (Ripley, professor of applied statistics, Oxford)  
>>>> pointed out, R doesn't care. The only annoying part for me as a  
>>>> Mac binary maintainer is that it means Apple has abandoned the  
>>>> only branch that supported Fortran back-end, so in the future we  
>>>> will not be able to provide native Fortran for Xcode. This has  
>>>> been known for a while and Apple's stance is that they don't care  
>>>> about Fortran, so in some (but not immediate) future we may be  
>>>> back to the mess of mixing compilers.
>>>>
>>>> Note that LLVM and clang don't really have any real benefits for  
>>>> the R users so far. Tests suggest that they make some parts  
>>>> slower and we could not measure any overall benefit (unlike let's  
>>>> say on arm), so people were not rushing to llvm/clang so far.  
>>>> Apple's move to llvm/clang is really based on a political  
>>>> decision, not a technical one. The only benefit I see so far is  
>>>> what Brian mentioned as well that some people will have to  
>>>> realize that gcc is not the standard and can test on other  
>>>> compilers to find their bugs.
>>>>
>>>> Cheers,
>>>> Simon (Urbanek, statistics research, AT&T Labs)
>>>>
>>>> Is it really true that Apple, a company that is alive today  
>>>> largely due to its inroads in education, is willing to put the  
>>>> distribution of the most rapidly growing statistics engine used  
>>>> by academics in jeopardy because "… Apple's stance is that they  
>>>> don't care about Fortran …"? R has recently been adopted as the  
>>>> official language by the Interuniversity Consortium for Political  
>>>> and Social Research at the University of Michigan, the biggest  
>>>> trainer of social science grad students in the country. It is  
>>>> being adopted by universities and colleges, governments, and  
>>>> research institutions at a staggering pace (the price is right,  
>>>> you know). That the use of this extremely useful and powerful  
>>>> application on the Macs in education should be put at risk by a  
>>>> simple reluctance to not accommodate Fortran is not just unwise;  
>>>> it's just plain silly.
>>>>
>>>> Is Simon right? If he is, fix it. Now.
>>>>
>>>> Tracy Lightcap
>>>> Professor and Chair
>>>> Department of Political Science
>>>> LaGrange College
>>>> 601 Broad St.
>>>> LaGrange  GA  30240-2999
>>>> (O) tlightcap@lagrange.edu (H) altlamp@mindspring.com
>>>> 706.880.8226
>>>> www.lagrange.edu/academics/political-science/faculty/tlightcap.aspx
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>

Tracy Lightcap
Professor and Chair
Department of Political Science
LaGrange College
601 Broad St.
LaGrange  GA  30240-2999
(O) tlightcap@lagrange.edu (H) altlamp@mindspring.com
706.880.8226
www.lagrange.edu/academics/political-science/faculty/tlightcap.aspx




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