According to Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) 
Elizabeth Kerr, scientists have three main concerns: getting quick results from their computations, having the freedom to be creative and finding solutions that are financially sound.
That's why Kerr, director of science and technology markets at Apple, and a scientist herself, sees the science and technology markets as key components of the company's business model. To reflect sci-tech's increasing importance in Cupertino, Apple has launched a science track at this year's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), which kicked off Monday in San Francisco.
"We will be running an Apple Science lounge with informal roundtables where conversation can center on sci-tech needs, and our engineers will be available to those attending," she said in an interview with MacNewsWorld. She added that additional science tracks at the conference include application-development tools, operating-system foundations and working with images -- both audio and video.
"In science, everything is customized, and nothing off the shelf seems to meet every need," Kerr continued. "So these sessions on development and production will cater to science-track attendees."
Mac OS X: The Scientists' Choice?
Mike Swenson, senior analyst of life sciences computing at IDC, said that OS X's user-friendly interface and Unix core have driven its adoption by the scientific community.
"The visualization capabilities of earlier versions of the Mac have long appealed to chemists and biologists, and when OS X was introduced, it helped invigorate these Mac enthusiasts," Swenson told MacNewsWorld.
"It also won over some of the scientists who were keeping two computers at their desk; a Windows-based machine for general office productivity and presentations, and a Unix or Linux workstation for scientific applications," Swenson added.
According to Swenson, OS X's customization features, along with its open-source roots, are critical drivers, particularly in the academic and government sectors of the science markets.
"The BSD core of Mac OS X makes it pretty trivial to port over Linux-based applications, and [scientists can] still access all the office-productivity applications they need to operate," he explained.
Roger Kay, IDC research manager of desktop PC hardware at IDC told MacNewsWorld that the OS X-Mac combination provides users with a scientific-level computer with an easy-to-use GUI. At the same time, Kay believes that the scientific community will remain a multiplatform environment, with Windows and different flavors Unix, along with OS X.
Specializing OS X
The MathWorks, a firm that develops specialized software for engineers and scientists, recently ported MATLAB -- its high-level technical computing language and interactive environment for algorithm development, data visualization, data analysis and numerical computation -- to OS X because of customer demand.
"We supported earlier versions of the Mac OS; however, customers wanted support 
for OS X, and with it being a Unix-type system, we easily moved the platform to it," MATLAB applications marketing manager Leslie Mehrez said in an interview with MacNewsWorld. Mehrez added that MATLAB is used as a foundation upon which users build new applications that are customized for their particular discipline.
According to Mehrez, Rosetta InPharmatics, a subsidiary of Merck and Company, collaborated with the Netherlands Cancer Institute to build a tool for clinicians using MATLAB. The resulting application can enable physicians to reduce the amount of toxic chemotherapy to patients undergoing treatment for breast cancer by nearly 50 percent.
While MATLAB has a sizable OS X base amid its 500,000 users internationally, few allow MathWorks permission to discuss what platform on which they perform their research, Mehrez acknowledged.
Mac's in the Army Now
For her part, Kerr believes the selection of Xserves by COLSA Corporation [Blane Warrene, "US Army Drafts Apple Xserve for Supercomputer" MacNewsWorld, June 22, 2004] for advanced U.S. Army research, confirms Apple's commitment to becoming a larger player in the high-performance computing market.
In an interview with MacNewsWorld, George Landingham, deputy director of systems simulation development with the U.S. Army's Aviation and Missile Research Center at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, said his group hopes that the Xserve-based MACH5 will reduce dramatically the time it takes to analyze data on hypersonic flight. This analysis includes what he called "computationally intense equations regarding combustion and chemistry."
Landingham said his group's research is focused on scramjet technology, which can propel vehicles at speeds of Mach 8 to Mach 12 -- the equivalent of 4,800 to 7,200 miles per hour.
"We were held back in previous attempts to solve these equations due to system limitations for processing data," Landingham said. "We need to analyze fuel being injected, air flow and fuel being combusted at hypersonic speeds, not a simple task."
Dr. Anthony DiRienzo, executive vice president at COLSA Corporation, told MacNewsWorld that the scramjet data the U.S. Army needs analyzed is three-dimensional, and in the past, processing just a few milliseconds of it would take months. With the MACH5, Army researchers will be able to process upwards of 16 equations on 8 million cells of data overnight.
According to Landingham, once the system goes into production in November at COLSA, Army scientists will begin processing data. If successful, they might seek to expand projects on the MACH5.
"This research is part of the National Aerospace Initiative," he said. "We'll have to wait and see how it goes, but certainly we have other problems to solve which we could use this system for."
The NAI is a joint effort between the US Army's research arm, NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Talkback: 
